


Since We Started Breathing

by commoncomitatus



Series: XIX [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2706908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S1-2 bridge. With Tommy dead and Oliver doing what he does best, Laurel finds herself with a lot of broken pieces to pick up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

—

At least there’s a body in the coffin this time.

It’s a cruel thought, she knows, but it’s all she can process as she stands over it, watches the dirt as they throw it over the box, over the body, over _Tommy_. At least she gets to see him buried this time. At least she gets to know for sure where he is, what happened, how he died. There’s no doubt about it, no sliver of hope, no shred of cock-eyed optimism to stop her from making peace with the loss, making peace with him. There’s nothing at all, just a box and a body and the vague notion that at least this time she might find a little closure.

The funeral, such as it is, is a small affair. That’s no surprise, really; there aren’t many in the city who would mourn the son of the man who brought so much misery down on them, the son of the man responsible for all their hurt, all their loss, all the other funerals taking place this week. There’s hundreds of them, hundreds of dead and hundreds more left behind to say their last goodbyes.

Say what you will about Malcolm Merlyn, she muses, but he’s done wonders for the undertaking business.

As maudlin and bitter as it is, the thought strikes a nerve. It lashes at her, cuts at the places where she’s raw and sensitive from too much crying, and before she can stop herself she bursts out laughing. It’s not funny, not even a little bit, but it’s more than she can do to hold it in. The sound is something separate from her, dissociated and distant; there’s no humour in it, no emotion at all, just a kind of mania that starts somewhere in the pit of her stomach and spirals out until it’s bigger than she is. She knows that it’s disrespectful, that it’s an insult to his memory, but she can’t control herself, and she cannot stop it.

Her father doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look at her. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was embarrassed, but they’ve lost too much together to think he’d feel that way over something so simple. Besides, she can feel the tremors in his fingers, the tension in his hands as he rubs her arms, quick nervous motion to keep his own feelings down.

They’ve attended so many funerals in the last few years, the two of them, and she’s angry with herself for making him come to another one. For a time, she knows, he was happy for her; they’ve both moved on from the days where he’d shake his head at her taste in men, Oliver the frat boy, Oliver the waste-of-space, Oliver who’d never be good enough for his little girl. They’ve come a long way since he judged her for every decision she ever made, and though he never really saw anything more in Tommy than he ever saw in Oliver, at least this time he saw a little more in Laurel, and made an effort to respect her choices. The helpless little girl who needed her daddy’s protection from the big bad world is long gone, and in her place is a bright young woman who can make her own decisions.

That’s what he sees in her now, and it hurts to revert here, to go back to being that helpless little girl, to needing his strength, his support, the quick flurry of motion as he rubs her arms and her back, as he looks at her and doesn’t speak. He’s supposed to be the one who needs her, the one who can’t keep his life together without her there to keep him clean. He’s supposed to be the one who falls apart, not her, and she hates that she’s so weak, hates that this place makes her that way, hates that she can see all of his mistakes in the way he looks back at her, hates the silence that hangs on the air between them like an accusation.

Ollie doesn’t say anything either. It’s his best friend lying in that box, but he doesn’t seem to care that Laurel is out of control, that she’s ruining the moment, that she can’t stop laughing. He doesn’t seem to care about anything.

Truth be told, it’s something of a miracle that he showed up at all. He’s not exactly known for being reliable, after all; he never was, not even before he came back from the dead. Since, though, he’s been even worse, and if she was feeling a little more charitable Laurel might even concede that it’s understandable if he wants to avoid funerals after dealing with the fallout of his own for so long. It would still hurt, still make her angry, but she would understand, at least a little more than she usually does when he goes into one of his selfish flight-reflex moments and ducks out of something important.

But all that empathy is apparently wasted, because here he is after all, standing there with his mother and his sister, and though he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut his eyes speak volumes as they cut across the grave between them and lock wordlessly on hers. Sympathy, distance, and the faintest flicker of emotion underneath all that calm. Even now, even here, he’s every inch the golden boy of Starling.

That’s it. That’s everyone. Two Lances, three Queens, and a few scattered friends of Tommy’s the names of whom she doesn’t even know because they never mixed in the same circles. It’s not exactly a state affair, though she supposes he wouldn’t want one even if it was an option. That would reek too much of his father, he would’ve said, too much like the glamour and the grandeur of the man who thought he could save the city by destroying it. The memory catches in her throat, choking the laughter into tears.

Her father catches her hand as the emotion shifts, squeezes her fingers, and she lets the contact ground her just enough to quiet the gasps. It’s a strange moment, a shattered-glass reflection of Sara’s funeral all those years ago. Laurel was the strong one then, the one standing upright, the one in control, and Dad was the one who couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. He was devastated, broken, but she was just angry, and she squeezed his hand back then just like he’s squeezing hers now.

Anger is easy. It’s safe, and it gives the illusion of being strong. Maybe that’s why she embraced it so readily after the _Queen’s Gambit_ , why she clung so hard to the things that were black and white, the stupid senseless rage. Maybe that’s why she tried so hard to hate Sara, hate Oliver, even hate Robert Queen for being complicit in the whole sordid affair. He must’ve known, she remembers thinking; _someone_ must’ve known. It was so much safer to seethe than to grieve, and for as long as she was drowning in the anger she was safe from the rest of it, the pain and the loss and the empty space where her sister used to be, where her boyfriend used to be, where the two people who mattered most in her life had taken themselves away from her. She wouldn’t have to think about the void they left behind, not if she focused instead on the things they made for themselves, the things they took from her, the things they hid away.

She was angry then, and she’s angry now too, but it’s different. She’s not angry at Tommy; fact is, he’s about the only person in the whole damn world that she doesn’t hate right now. Just thinking about him strikes like a blow in her chest and blinds her with a fresh flurry of tears. Just thinking about him makes her wish that she couldn’t think at all. Thinking about him doesn’t make her angry; it makes her hurt, and that’s why it’s easier to turn away and scrabble for someone else to be angry at.

Moira Queen, for example. Moira, standing there with her precious son like she has any right to be here, like she’s not at least partially responsible for what happened to Tommy, like it’s not her fault. His life, the five hundred and two other lives that were lost in the earthquake… they’re on her conscience as much as Malcolm Merlyn’s, aren’t they? Isn’t that what she said? Isn’t that what she flat-out admitted right in front of the whole city? She’s standing right there, as bold as anything, one perfectly manicured hand on her son’s shoulder, on Ollie’s shoulder, comforting him for the pain she caused. There are tears in her eyes too, doubly blurred by the tears in Laurel’s, and Laurel knows she should hate that, that she should want to stride across the space between them and slap those tears out of her. She should want to hurt her, Moira Queen, who was always so good to her. She should want to make her suffer like she made everyone else suffer, make her feel just a flicker of the pain she inflicted. She should want to turn all the anger on her, all the rage, everything.

She should want all of that, but she doesn’t. There’s so much hate inside of her right now, sharp and keen as a blade, but she can’t bring herself to point it at the one person who’s earned it.

Honestly, she can’t even bring herself to blame Malcolm Merlyn. At least, not really. He’s responsible for all of this, really and truly responsible; he’s the one who turned the Glades into a vision from a nightmare, the one who killed five hundred and three people, including his own son, the reason why five hundred families are grieving, the reason why there’s a body in the coffin, why Laurel is laughing and crying and blinded by tears. He’s the one who made all those things happen; he’s the one to blame, but when she pictures his face and tries to shape her rage into something valid, nothing happens. All she can see is his face, the father of the man she might have made a life with. Just a man who did a terrible, terrible thing.

It’s so clinical, so detached, so much like the legal mind she worked for so many years to hone. It’s exactly the wrong time to be thinking like a lawyer, she knows, and if there’s one person in Starling who doesn’t deserve that kind of thinking, it’s Malcolm Merlyn. But apparently she really isn’t thinking clearly, because she can’t stop herself from thinking that way any more than she could stop herself from laughing a moment ago.

It should be easy. In her heart, she knows that it is. Malcolm Merlyn and Moira Queen, they’re responsible for what happened to the Glades, what happened to Tommy. She should be furious that Moira’s here, that she has to see her face in the one place she shouldn’t be; she should be furious that she never got to see Malcolm suffer for what he did to his own son, furious at all the injustice still screaming all around her. She should be blind with all that fury, justified in knowing it’s in the right place, but she’s not. The sight of Moira, thin-lipped and shaking as she tries to support her son, doesn’t make her angry. It doesn’t make her want to storm over there and make a scene, doesn’t make her want to scream and shout and cry out for vengeance, doesn’t make her want to slap the tears from her face. It doesn’t make her want to do anything.

She isn’t angry with the people who did this, she realises. She’s angry at the people who were helpless to stop it.

—

Oliver disappears after the service, but that doesn’t stop his mother from sticking around to try to mend fences.

She corners them after the service, and Laurel groans internally because her car is still too far away to make a strategic escape. She doesn’t want to talk to Moira right now, and not just because she’s the reason there’s a funeral in the first place. It’s not just Malcolm Merlyn’s associate she doesn’t want to talk to; it’s Mrs Queen. It’s Moira, Oliver’s mother, the woman she once imagined as her mother-in-law, to the woman who always treated her like she was a part of their family.

She remembers the old days, back when things were simple, or at least when she thought they were. When it was just them, Laurel and Oliver just like it was supposed to be, when it was just the two of them, when Moira and Robert always made her feel welcome, always made her feel like their home was hers. It makes her feel sick to remember all that now, to remember how she gave in to Oliver again, to remind herself for the hundredth time that Tommy will never know how sorry she is. It’s not right, she thinks. Moira being here, Ollie being here. It feels twisted, like this place is tainted, and when Moira leans in to hold her close her arms feel more like chains than comfort.

“Laurel, dear.” Her voice is like a whip, sharp and quick, and Laurel wonders if it’ll leave a scar. “I’m so terribly sorry. Like I told Oliver…”

 _I don’t care what you told Oliver,_ Laurel thinks. _I don’t want to care about Oliver at all. I don’t want to care about any of you._

And yet, here she is, just like she always was, hugging her back, returning the embrace, clinging to the mother of her not-so-dead ex-boyfriend, the woman partially responsible for all of this. Here she is, just like always, melting into her, giving in to the chained comfort, the warmth, the feeling of being home, and she hates it. She hates that she can still take solace from this woman, hates that the solace silences the anger, that it stops the tremors, that it does all the things her own father can’t. She hates it, but hating doesn’t stop her from giving in all over again, face pressed against Moira’s shoulder just like when the _Gambit_ went down, just like when it was Oliver’s funeral, when it was Robert’s, when it was Sara’s, just like the good old days, just like…

“It’s all right,” she hears herself choke, though they both know it’s not true. “I’m… I’m glad you could make it.”

Moira takes a step back, eyes cloudy with tears that look so real, so honest, so much like the woman who broke her heart six years ago and then held her until the tears stopped. She is so much like the Moira she remembers right now, and it is so hard to try and hate her.

“You can thank your father for that,” she’s saying, very quietly, and Laurel turns to him with a thousand questions.

He shrugs, like they’re talking about the weather. “I didn’t really do anything,” he says, but the look on both their faces say they know it’s bullshit. “You’re within your rights to be here. I just pulled a couple of strings to make it easier.”

That’s not true either, and just like before all three of them know it. It’d take a whole lot more than a couple of pulled strings from a demoted beat cop to get Moira Queen out of her cell for any reason, and all the more so for this particular one. For all her faults, Moira’s a very intelligent woman, shrewd to a fault, and it’s simply not possible that she doesn’t know the situation and its delicate technicalities at least as well as the cop and the lawyer do. Maybe she doesn’t quite realise just how precarious a position her friend Quentin is right now, how impossible it is for a newly-demoted beat cop to call in any kind of favour at all, but there’s no doubt in Laurel’s mind that she understands the gist of what her presence here has cost, that she knows it all perfectly well, and when she looks away, squinting at the horizon line, the reflection of the sun in her eyes burns like regret.

It’s humility that she shows, though, bowing her head with a smile that’s as tight as it is forced. “Well,” she says softly. “Thank you anyway. It was a thoughtful gesture. Especially after…” She trails off, and it’s hard to hear the hitch in her voice and not to feel pity for her. Even after all she’s done, it’s still so hard not to see the woman she once was. “At any rate, I can’t imagine it’s easy to have me here, but I wanted…” Another hitch, another crack in Laurel’s heart. “…for Oliver…”

 _Oliver_ , Laurel thinks, surprising herself a little with how much bitterness she feels for the son that she still can’t bring herself to feel for the mother. For once in his life, Ollie’s actually kind of an innocent in all this. At the very least, he’s as innocent as he ever gets, and while that admittedly isn’t much, he’s still a whole lot closer to it than his mother. At least for the moment, he’s the good guy, and that makes it all the more strange that his name is the one that makes her flinch, the one that makes her spine turn to steel, the one that makes her angry.

“Of course,” Dad says to Moira. He’s trying to smile, but maybe the sight of her is harder on him than he thought it would be because his eyes are misting over and his voice is cracking too, just like Moira’s, just like Laurel’s heart. “It’s not an easy time for any of us.”

“No, it’s not.” Laurel hears herself mutter, and the rage that cuts through her has nothing to do with Moira, or even Oliver. It strikes out of the blue, aimless and directionless, but it takes her over completely. She doesn’t know where it came from, why it chose to surface now, even what it hopes to achieve; she just knows that if she doesn’t get out of here right now, she’s going to explode. “Excuse me.”

She can hear her father calling after her as she storms away, but she ignores him. She can hear Moira, as well, a flurry of trembling apologies, _“I didn’t mean to upset anyone”_ and _“I’m terribly sorry, Quentin”_ and a thousand other stupid pointless things, and it ignites the fury all over again.

She wants to turn around and yell at them both, tell her dad it’s not about him, tell Moira it’s not about her either, make them both realise that it’s not about any of them, that it’s about Tommy, that they’re supposed to be here for him, that they’re supposed to be mourning him, grieving him, thinking of him. She wants to remind them that it’s a funeral, that it’s _his_ funeral, that he’s dead and there’s a body in the coffin this time, that there’s no mistake, no second chance, no miracle reunion waiting at the end of five long years. She wants to remind them that it’s real, that it happened, that it’s over and done, that he’s _dead_ , but trying to speak is so hard and the feeling takes her by the throat before she can try.

Her car isn’t too far away, but she’s shaking by the time she gets there. Her fingers are numb and clumsy as she fumbles in her bag, scrabbling for her keys with a kind of dissociated desperation.

It’s not logical, what she’s feeling, but it’s urgent and unshakeable: she has to get out of here. That’s all that makes sense, the only thing she an process. She has to get away. Away from her father, away from the Queens, away from the unfamiliar faces of friends who apparently meant enough to Tommy to be here but not enough that he’d ever introduce them to her. She has to get away from the coffin, from the body, from the cold hard evidence that this is real. She has to get away from everything, has to get back to her apartment, her safe space, the only space that’s hers.

The keys slip through her fingers, hitting the ground with a clatter and coming to rest against her heel.

She stares down at them, sunlight gleaming in arcs off the silver surface, and she wishes it was brighter, wishes it could blind her completely, wishes that she didn’t have to see this place, the dirt-covered coffin, the body still and lifeless inside. She wishes that she couldn’t see anything at all, and her eyes sting as she squints at the dazzling metal, the brightness that isn’t nearly enough. She wishes it wasn’t so hard to be here, so hard to move, wishes she could just bend over, pick up the damn keys, get into her car, and go back home where it’s safe, where she can be alone, where she can breathe.

…but she can’t. She can’t move, can’t bend over, can’t breathe, can’t do anything at all.

And so she falls. Crumples like paper, folded uselessly against the side of the car, and sobs until she can’t stand either.

—

Her father insists on driving her home, and she doesn’t have the strength left to pretend she can do it by herself.

She hates his car. It smells of coffee and sweat, of hard work and long days, and she aches for the familiar scent of her own, the perfume and the colder air. He feels the cold, always has, and he keeps the heat up high. She hates that too; the warmth is stifling, and the seat is uncomfortable. Nothing feels right here, but she supposes that makes a kind of sense right now, because she doesn’t feel right in her own skin either.

When he pulls up outside her apartment building, it’s by numb instinct that she opens her mouth to invite him in. The words are half-formed before she catches them, ready to be blurted out without a thought, and it’s only by sheer force of will that she silences herself before they can escape. She doesn’t want his company, doesn’t want anything to remind her of where she’s been, what it means, all the things she feels, all the things that she still doesn’t understand.

“I don’t want to go back,” she says, and sounds just like his little girl, the one that they both thought grew up years ago. “Not yet.”

“I know,” he says, and she knows that he does because he was exactly the same way after Sara. “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s over now.”

Laurel shakes her head, fumbles for her keys again. Her hands are a little steadier now that she’s away from there, away from those people, away from that place, now that she’s home and free and almost safe. She remembers the gleam of sunlight on metal, remembers the way they sat there in the gravel, hopeless and so close to lost. She shuts her eyes, turns them over in her hands, once, twice, three times, wishes she too could be lost so easily.

“Can you get my car?” she asks, and her breathing gets a little easier as he prises the keys from her hand. “I don’t want to go back.”

He doesn’t say anything, but there’s an ache in his smile that makes her ribs feel like they’re going to break. He wants to stay, she can tell; he’d give anything to sleep on her couch, to stay close by her side for the rest of the day, the night, the whole week if that’s what it takes for her to stop feeling like this. She can see the protective father in him, the man that he couldn’t be the last time, after Oliver and Sara. He thinks he has so much to make up for, and he has no idea that the best thing he could’ve done for her was the terrible thing he did.

His problems were the reason she never had one herself. The drinking, the self-destruction, the way he couldn’t look after himself… someone had to be strong, had to take care of him when he couldn’t take care of himself. It was just the two of them after Mom left, and he was in no condition to do anything, so it had to be her. It had to be Laurel because she was the only one left.

She’ll never tell him that, of course. Why risk rocking that boat after he’s come so far? But keeping the truth inside doesn’t change it, and looking at him now she can’t help wishing that he’d fall apart all over again just to give her a reason not to.

It’s different now, though. This time she’s the only one grieving. It changes everything, not least of all because it puts her in his place. It makes her weak, makes her small, and she doesn’t want him to stick around and see that for a second longer than he has to. She doesn’t want him breathing down her neck, doesn’t want him in her personal space, doesn’t want him holding her hand like she used to hold his. She doesn’t want any of the things he’s so sure she needs, any of the things he needed himself the last time they sat here like this. She doesn’t want it, and she doesn’t want him. At least for right now, the last thing in the world this helpless little girl wants is her father.

Of course he understands. Even if he wishes it was different, he’s her father, and he knows her. He turns to the door without another word, and though he clearly wants to ask her to reconsider, he doesn’t. It’s obvious that he’s aching to push this, to say that he’ll pick up her car tomorrow or the next day, that he’ll do it any day she wants if only she’ll let him stay with her now. It’s obvious that he wants to remind her that he’s been here himself, that he’s been exactly where she is and that he knows the dangers of being alone better than anyone. It’s obvious, and more than a little predictable, all those things he wants to say, but as true as it might be he knows his daughter too well to try. He knows what happens when someone tries to make her change her mind when it’s already made up. He knows he’ll only push her away if he tries to push her at all.

And so he doesn’t. He just nods, smoothes out the creases in his jacket, and gives her a last lingering look as he turns and heads for the door.

It’s the first positive emotion she’s felt in what feels like forever, the sudden surge of love and compassion that rises up in her as she watches him turn around, watches him straighten his spine to do what’s best for his daughter even as it breaks his heart. It’s overwhelming in an entirely different way to the anger, and it’s almost without thinking that she lurches forward, dragging him into a hug so fierce that for a few moments neither one of them can breathe.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and they both know it’s not about the car. “Thank you, daddy.”

The word is out before she even realises she’s been thinking it, long before she has a chance to realise she’s said it and feel embarrassed. _Daddy_ , the plea of a little girl to the one person she thinks can save her world. She hasn’t used that word in years; she’s always been the self-proclaimed grown-up daughter, even back when she and Sara were small, and she’d outgrown all those juvenile terms of endearment almost before she outgrew her milk teeth. She doesn’t know what’s brought it out now and, frankly, she doesn’t want to.

Her father is almost as surprised as she is, but just like before he’s smart enough not to say anything about it. His eyes are bright when he looks back at her, though, too bright to blame on the dim lighting in her apartment, and as she steps back to give them both a little distance she can see that they’re a little wet. She wants to call out to him, wants to fill the space between them again, fill it with something a little more positive than pain, something a little more tangible than love, but it’s taking everything she has just to keep from falling apart in front of him.

He saves her now, just like he did when she was a kid, when she was young and proud and entirely too aware of how vulnerable she was. Back then, the demons were skinned knees and broken toys, shadows under the bed and sharing a room with a sister who snored; today it’s a broken heart and a kind of pain that can’t be healed, but he knows his grown-up daughter just as well as he knew that little girl who insisted she wasn’t one. He knows her, and she wishes that he didn’t, but right now it’s more of a blessing than a curse as he smiles and sighs her name.

“Anything you need, sweetheart.” It’s barely a breath, so soft she has to strain to hear it, shot through with shared pain. “You know that.”

She does know it. Truly, she does. But he’s not what she needs right now, and she can’t even bring herself to look at him as he turns away again and lets himself out.

“Thank you,” she says, words lost to the slamming of the door, and lets the empty apartment close in around her.

—


	2. Chapter 2

—

She tells herself that it’s his fault she hits the liquor cabinet.

It’s an easy lie to tell; she’s thinking about him, after all, his vices and his self-destruction, his reactions to the kind of grief she’s struggling with. She’s thinking about how he must have felt, how desperate, how lost, to retreat so completely into something he knew was dangerous. It’s true enough that she’s thinking about all those things, and it makes for a convenient excuse, but of course it’s not true.

The truth is, she hits the liquor cabinet because she wants to. She hits the liquor cabinet because she’s in pain, because she’s raw and aching and lost and she wants to numb herself against all those feelings, all those awful conflicting feelings that she still can’t make sense of.

It would be easy to harness the anger if she knew why she was feeling it, why it comes to her the way it does, why it turns itself out in all the wrong directions, why it makes her feel the way it does. If she could only figure out why she’s more angry at Tommy’s best friend than the woman responsible for his death, if she could only figure out why she’s more angry at the vigilante who tried to save the city than the man who tried to destroy it… if she could only figure out why she’s hollow and empty and throwing out rage in all the wrong directions at all the wrong people, it would all be so much easier. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t know why, and she’s so afraid of looking inside herself and trying to find the answers, and that… that is not easy. It’s not easy at all; it’s hard. It is so unbearably hard.

That’s why she hits the liquor cabinet. Because drinking is easy. Because it stops her from thinking. Because that is the one thing she learned from her father in the last six years.

He was right about that. Drinking really is easy. It comes naturally, instinctively, a seductive rhythm of pouring and swallowing, and the burn in her throat is exactly the right kind of pain to quiet the other kind, the tightness and the tears and the empty hollow place where the anger devours the grief. It burns, the liquor, but then she’s burning too, and they burn together, the two of them, just like her dad burned himself to the ground time and time again. It burned him up, and she lets it burn her up too, lets herself catch fire until the memory of smoke makes it easier to breathe.

Her vision clouds, not quite blurring but close enough, and it’s a fresh kind of comfort to blink and realise that there are no tears, that it’s not her pain but something else that’s making the room fade out and turn hazy, that makes the world into something indistinct and discordant, that dims the light and swirls the shadows like little flames in front of her. She’s been intoxicated before, even been blackout-drunk once or twice during her ill-advised and short-lived party girl phase; that lasted about as long as her first week of college, and then she came back down with a crash and a screaming hangover and vowed never to do anything that stupid again.

This isn’t like that, though. She’s not trying to keep up with the other girls on campus, not stampeding her way through a young adult’s rite of passage, not trying every stupid thing she can think of before maturity sets in and she knuckles down to work her ass off for the rest of her life. This isn’t like that at all. This is pain on the most primal, fundamental level. This is drowning and drowning out, and she is so far removed from that idealistic young woman she can’t even remember her face.

Maturity doesn’t count for much next to beasts like grief and pain. That’s a lesson she should have learned six years ago, when it was her dad sitting here in her place, when he was the one staring numbly into a bottle and she was the one dragging him out of it, the one telling him that it was all right, that things would get better, that they would get through this together, the two of them. She should have learned then that maturity isn’t worth very much at all in the real world, that a father’s love can destroy just as much as it creates, that sometimes a helpless little girl needs to step up and be the grown-up when the grown-up is dying.

She should’ve learned a lot of things back then, but maybe she was so busy clinging to her own strength back then that she never stopped to wonder what had happened to his. The strong compassionate father who was always there for her and Sara, who taught them to ride their bikes, who put a band-aid on every scrape, kissed every bruise, spent every night reading them bedtime stories and checking under their beds for monsters that didn’t exist… the man she used to call ‘daddy’ without a second thought was nowhere to be seen, drowned at the bottom of that damn bottle, and his daughter was so busy stepping up to fill his shoes that she never even noticed.

Now, of course, it’s too late, and though she can feel the ghosts of his drinking days hanging over her shoulder like an unwanted guest, there’s no place for them here, and no place for him either. It’s easy enough to blame his vices for the way she reached for the same, but she doesn’t want to think about the damage those vices did now that she’s tasting the same bitterness on her own tongue. She doesn’t want to think about what it means, that ugly word _addiction_ , doesn’t want to remember what it looked like in the eyes of the man who had always kept her safe from people like that. She doesn’t want to think about all the ways he failed because of moments like this, and she definitely doesn’t want to think about how easy it would be for her to fail too.

She’s stronger than he is, she tells herself. She was stronger back then, and she will be stronger again now. What’s one little lapse after burying the man she might have loved? After all, it’s hardly worse than falling straight into bed with her dead boyfriend’s best friend, and isn’t that exactly what she did after the last time she stood here? At least this time, she had the decency to do that particular deed before he died.

The thought makes her feel terrible, and she groans out loud as Oliver’s face floods in to replace Tommy’s. He’s smiling, just like he always used to smile when he saw here, back before he died, before he took Sara, before Tommy, before any of this. He’s smiling, like they’re young and stupid again, like they have the whole world spread out before them, and the memory of the last time he smiled, the last time either of them smiled, just makes her feel worse.

She remembers it so clearly, that last time, that last stupid time. She remembers the way he ran his fingers through her hair, lazy and careless like he always was when they were dating, like they had all the time in the world. She hears his voice again now, as clear as if he really is there, as if it’s really happening. There’s nothing to stop them now, he’s saying, nothing standing between them any more. Tommy’s gone, and won’t he be happy up there with Sara, living the high life together in whatever purgatory tragic heroes go to. They’re free to make the most of what they have, whatever and wherever that is, and shouldn’t they do the same? Laurel and Oliver, just like it always was; aren’t they’re free to do what they like down here in the land of the living, to find what meagre comfort they can in each other’s arms, the way they always did?

That has to be the liquor talking, because the thought makes her feel sick. If that one stupid mis-step taught either of them anything, it’s that they’re better off apart, that they don’t really work together, that it’s alway so complicated when they collide, so messy and so screwed-up. Besides, they’ve barely said a word to each other since the earthquake. Not even Ollie would be so forward, so brash and crude, not with the debris still scattered between them, not with Tommy lying in that coffin, barely even settled into his grave. She knows it’s stupid, irrational, delirious ramblings borne of slow-burning but still she can’t drive the image from her head, can’t block out the echo of his voice, the memory of his touch…

 _It’s just us now,_ she thinks, and her thoughts sound like Oliver too. _It’s just us. Is that really such a terrible thing?_

Yes. Yes it is, and she grabs the bottle with both hands, swallows straight from the neck, and lets herself drown.

—

The next voice she hears is her father’s.

It’s discordant and remote, almost as hazy as the Ollie in her head, but there’s a note of severity that cuts through the clouds and tells her it’s real, that she’s not imagining it this time. Maybe she dropped off for a minute or two, exhausted by the day’s events, or maybe she’s a little closer to blackout-drunk than she thought she was, because when she forces her eyes to open he’s standing above her with the bottle in his hands and heartbreak on his face.

“I think you’ve had enough there, kid.”

She closes her eyes again, licks over the taste of stale liquor on her lips. “Go away,” she says. “I’m _grieving_.”

His sigh is a loaded weapon. “Laurel.”

It takes more effort than she’ll ever admit to sit up, and that’s kind of confusing because she doesn’t remember lying down in the first place. Her neck’s stiff, though, and her face feels rough and kind of numb where it’s been pressed against the arm of the couch. If she did drop off, the evidence suggests it was probably for more than a minute or two, and that in itself is probably reason enough to listen to her dad, to recognise that he knows what he’s talking about and back down from the urge to reach for that bottle.

“You worry too much,” she says, but there’s a slur in her voice that says maybe he’s worrying just the right amount. “I just buried my boyfriend, dad. I just buried my boyfriend _again_. I think I’m kind of within my right to be a little irrational for a couple of hours. I really don’t think it’s a crime, do you?”

“No,” he agrees, a little too quickly. “No, I don’t. But as long as that’s all it is. If you’re just grieving, if you just need a little something to make it easier just for tonight, that’s okay. You know that. It’s just…” His features soften, so suddenly and so completely that she can make out the shift even through the blur of her vision. “I don’t want you making a habit of it, sweetheart. That’s all.”

“And I won’t,” she insists, with all the certainty of too much liquor and not enough logic. “It’s not like that. It’s just…” Not even the slurring can hide the way her voice breaks. “It’s just so hard to think right now, dad. It’s just so hard…”

“I know,” he says. “I know it’s hard. I’ve been there, remember?” She hates how sober he looks as he says that, how sad and how sure, like a couple of AA meetings give him absolute authority on situations like this, like he’s the world’s leading authority on unhealthy coping methods just because he made that mistake himself. “Look, Laurel. No-one’s judging you for needing a drink tonight. Hell, I’m not even judging you for needing two or three. But it runs in the family, this sort of thing, and… well, you can’t be too careful.” His lips twitch, like he wants to cry. “You understand?”

Maybe a couple of drinks ago she would have, but that was then and this is now. Not that it matters anyway, because even if she could understand, she doesn’t want to.

“I’m not you,” she says, and there’s a tremor in her voice that matches the spasms in her fists when she thinks of Oliver, of the vigilante, of all the blameless people she blames for Tommy’s death. “I’m the one who stayed sober when you couldn’t, remember? I’m the one who saw all that stuff from the other side. I’m the one who…”

The words lodge in her throat, choking, sour memories churning like liquor inside her, and she doesn’t want to think. This is why she doesn’t want him to be here, why she can’t stand the sight of him right now, why she wishes he’d just turn around and walk away like he did before. She can’t deal with him, can’t deal with _then_ , and she can’t stop herself from thinking and feeling when he’s standing there reminding her that she has to. 

“Laurel,” he says.

“Stop it,” she tells him. “Stop acting like this is a big deal. Stop acting like I’m you. I’m not. I’m not like you, and I’m never going to be.” She relishes the taste of the words, swallows them down to soothe the burn in her throat. “It’s not a _drink_ , dad. It’s just a drink.”

“Pretty sure you heard that same excuse from me ten times a week,” he presses gently, and she can tell that he wants to keep pushing until she has no choice but to hear him, but even now he still knows her, still knows his little girl, and he slams on the brakes before he can push too hard. “But you’re right. You’re not a kid any more, Laurel. You’re an intelligent, successful young woman and I’d do well to remember that a little more often.”

“Yeah,” she says, voice hitching. “Yeah, you would.”

“All right.” He straightens his spine, and the room responds by bending at impossible angles all around him. “I won’t say another word about it. I promise.”

“Good,” she says, though neither of them are so naive as to believe it.

“Yeah.” There’s a sigh in the word, and Laurel squints at him through her discomfort, the pitching of the room and the pitching of her feelings, watches as he stoops to drop something on the coffee table. “Your car’s parked out back,” he tells her, and the unease is obvious. “I’ll leave the keys with you, so long as you promise not to use ’em until tomorrow.”

Laurel laughs. It’s a wobbly sound, fragile and dangerously close to a sob, and she quickly smothers it by dropping back onto the couch with a loud groan. “Where the hell would I go?” she mutters.

“Out for more liquor, maybe?” He’s very serious now, and she blinks dizzily as he waves the bottle in her face like an insult. “Because I’m taking this with me.”

She lets her eyes slide shut, feels the dizziness intensify without the visual cues to steady her, waves of vertigo as the world spins and twists like a roller-coaster. She clutches at the edge of the couch, feels her fingers curl around the fabric, instinctive and desperate, and tries not to think about how helpless she feels. Her father is right, she reminds herself, and she was right too; she’s a mature and sensible woman, she’s stronger than he ever was, and she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She doesn’t need anyone to validate her decisions, she insists, least of all him, but of course that’s a stupid thing to say. He’s still her father, for all his bad choices, and it’s so hard to hold her ground, so hard not to beg for forgiveness, not to promise that this will never happen again, that she’ll never be so reckless or so stupid, so hard not to crawl back and become the little girl he could always protect.

“I don’t need it,” she says aloud, and wonders if he knows she’s not talking about the liquor. “I’ve had enough.”

“I’m glad we agree on something,” he says. “Laurel, are you sure you don’t want me to stay here for the night?”

She struggles upright again, and the couch lurches beneath her like a boat, like a life-raft. It’s a weird feeling, unsafe, and she finds herself wondering if this is how Oliver felt after the _Gambit_ went down, if this is how it feels to drown, how it feels to survive, how it feels to live in the heartbeat between life and death. Suddenly, inexplicably, she wants to ask him about it. They’ve barely exchanged a word since that night, her and Ollie, but suddenly it’s all she can think of to call him and ask him; it overpowers her, so much so that she finds her fingers fumbling for her phone almost before she realises she’s doing it.

It’s probably the stupidest thing in the world that she could do right now, drunk-dialling Oliver Queen on the day of his best friend’s funeral to ask what dying feels like, but she’s not exactly thinking rationally at the moment. She’s quite the opposite of rational, really; she’s lonely and she’s angry and the couch won’t stop moving, and all she can think of is connecting with someone who knows how it feels to feel this way. It’s all she wants, and it’s only the sudden weight of her dad’s hand on her arm that stops her.

“Laurel?” There’s a weight to his voice now too, steel-strong and restraining, like he knows all the things she’s thinking, like he recognises the dark road her mind is racing down, like he’s thinking back to his own darkness. “Sweetheart?”

“I’m sure,” she says, heavy-headed and broken.

And she is. She’s not sure of much right now — her thoughts, her feelings; hell, even her centre of gravity is up for debate at the moment — but she’s definitely sure of that. She doesn’t want her father here; it’s the one thought she’s had the whole time, the one feeling that hasn’t changed even as her sobriety has. She’s sure that she doesn’t want him around in the morning to see it when she wakes up with a head full of regrets and cheeks stained with salt. She’s sure that she doesn’t want to hear him saying _‘I told you so’_ in his Disapproving Dad voice, sighing and shaking his head as he fixes her breakfast and demands that she force it down because she’ll feel worse if she doesn’t. She’s definitely, definitely sure that she doesn’t want him to see the fallout from all of these bad choices, the fallout they both know is coming.

She wants him to leave now, to turn around and shut the door behind him while he can still remember what it was like to have a grown-up daughter, while he can still look at her and see an intelligent and successful young woman who grew up into something so much stronger than him. She wants him to leave while he can still see his Laurel, his oldest daughter, the smart one, the resourceful one, the one who can do no wrong, while he can still remember that she’s the one who stuck by him when no-one else did, that she’s the one who never left, the only one who was there when things got bad, when _he_ got bad. She wants him to leave now, while there’s still a chance he might believe there’s a ghost of that woman still inside of her.

The worst part is, she knows he wouldn’t judge her if he found out the truth. After all the things she’s seen him do, all the struggles and the losses that they’ve faced together, he’s the one person who has more than earned the right to see her like this, to see fall apart and break down, to be strong for her when she’s the weak one. She has spent so long taking care of him, so long being there for him, holding the pieces of him together, and it’s only fair that he gets to see the same thing in her now. He’s the one person, the only one in the whole damn world who really would get it, who really would understand, even when she doesn’t really understand it herself, and even half-wasted and irrational she’s still smart enough to know that.

But then, again, he’s still her father. He’s still her _dad_ , and she’s still his daughter. She’s still his Laurel, and she has spent too long taking care of him to take that away now.

Maybe he sees that in her, sees the line that she can’t bring herself to cross, sees how frightened she is of all the things that lie on the other side. Maybe he sees more than she gives him credit for, because though he’d clearly give anything to fight for what he thinks is best, he doesn’t try to cross the line either. Just like before, when all she’d asked him to do was fetch her keys, before he had any reason to worry, before he had any reason to see his own face reflected in the haze behind her eyes. Just like before, he knows what she wants, knows how stubborn she is, how much like him, and he knows how impossible it is to help her when she doesn’t want to be helped.

So, again, he backs down. Again, he just sighs and shakes his head, familiar and yielding as he turns away. “Okay, then, kiddo,” he says, like her lawyer’s word really is the law.

She turns away in the same moment he does, eyes sliding close as she listens to his footsteps. The couch is hard, arm-rest digging into the side of her neck as she lies back against it, and the darkness swells like a kind of promise, a whisper of oblivion and silence, a haven from all the feelings, all the pain, all the things she doesn’t want to face, all the things she knows she can’t. She’s not tired, not really, but her head is so heavy it might as well be made out of lead. Closing her eyes makes her feel sick, makes the couch feel like drowning again, like floating and drifting and dying, like everything’s upside-down and inside out, and it’s so much worse when there’s only the darkness to distract her, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all, because at least the darkness is quiet. It’s quiet and it’s peaceful, and what’s a little vertigo next to the chaos that fills her when her eyes are open?

A moment, a lifetime, and then there’s a flicker of contact. Her father again, and why is he still here? She hates that, hates the warm lips that ghost across her forehead, the aching softness, bringing up memories of childhood, of safety, of her and Sara and whispered giggles in the dark. She hates that he makes her remember, hates that he’s still here, filling her poisoned head with clarity, and she wants to tell him to go already, to just leave her alone, but the part of her that isn’t dying knows that that’s what he’s doing.

She can feel the unspoken farewell in the way he smooths her hair back, the way his hand lingers across the curve of her temple, the way his lips linger too at the place where his thumb rests. Even now, even after everything, he’s still so much her daddy. He cares so much… but then, of course, hasn’t that always been his problem? He cares too much and it always ruins him, always ruins them both. She wants to sit up, to tell him that, to tell him again to get out before he breaks her all over again, but her limbs have turned to stone.

“Here,” he says, pulling away at last, and there’s a distant clatter of plastic against wood as he puts something on the floor. Even the sound is tender, just like him. “Just in case.”

She wants to ask what he’s talking about, what he’s doing, but she can’t speak any more than she can move. Maybe she is a little tired after all, she thinks, and the thought is more welcoming than she expected it to be. It’s almost comforting, the way she sinks into the feeling. It means that she might be okay after all, that she might not be so far gone, that she might get through this by herself; if she can feel tired, if she can feel sleepy, if she can let herself be seduced by darkness and silence and oblivion, surely she can’t be that far gone. She can’t be, can she?

It’s just a hard day, she reminds herself. That’s all. It’s just a hard day, because… because Tommy’s dead, because she’s burying her boyfriend yet again, because this time it’s real, this time it won’t change, because this time there’s a body in the coffin. Of course it’s hard. Of course it is.

No-one told her it would be this hard. But then, that’s okay. It’s supposed to be hard. Loss is supposed to be hard, grief is supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to feel like this. And if the darkness can protect her from it, even for just a little while, isn’t that a good thing? It means she has something to cling to, something to fall back on. It’s a place to go, a place to hide when the hardness is too hard and she can’t face the people who would make it easier.

“I’ll call you in the morning.” The words are warm against the side of her face, and they sting like salt in open wounds. “Love you, sweetheart.”

 _I love you,_ she whispers, but only the darkness hears.

—


	3. Chapter 3

—

She wakes to sunlight and a sick headache.

The headache is expected, albeit unwanted, but the sunlight definitely isn’t. She has a vague memory of darkness, the promise of oblivion, her father’s voice and a kiss pressed against her forehead, but that’s as much as she can catch, as much as she can pierce through the haze of distorted feeling and the shadows of nightmares still clinging to her eyelids.

She dreamed about Tommy. Of course she did. His mouth on hers, the taste of his tongue, smooth and wet and warm, the heat in his eyes, the fire in his heart, the way he looked at her. His face, soft at the edges like it was when he talked about them, hard across the corners like it was when he talked about his father. His arms, stronger than they ever were when he was alive, solid and impossibly large, biceps ridged by bruises, and it was only when she opened her eyes and looked up that she realised they weren’t really his at all.

She dreamed about Oliver too. Just as predictable, just as painful. She dreamed about about all the times he took Tommy’s place. In her heart, in her head, and in reality. She dreamed of the way she remembered him, the way she thought of him the first time with Tommy, not long after the boat went down, the way she called his name, the way that Tommy didn’t seem to care. She thought of him the next few times, too, every time she and Tommy fell together with his name on their tongues, every time, until he wasn’t dead any more. She always thought of Oliver, and she told herself that it was all right, that it was okay, that Tommy was thinking of Oliver too, and besides they weren’t really dating anyway, so what did it matter who either of them were thinking of? What difference did it make?

None at all, until it did, until suddenly they were dating, until suddenly Tommy was insecure and afraid, until he’d grown up and moved on and she was still thinking of Oliver. Suddenly, it wasn’t a lapse, wasn’t a handful of lapses, but a relationship, a real honest-to-god relationship, and he was so worried, so afraid of that history, those thoughts that should’ve been buried, so afraid that he let those fears eat him up, so afraid that he left her for them. He was so sure that she would end up in bed with Ollie, and so of course that’s what she did. Of course she did; isn’t that what Lance girls do?

She dreamed of his arms, Oliver’s arms. She dreamed of his back, of scars and stitches, the smell of burning wood and blood on leaves, of all the things she imagined the island must’ve smelled like, all the things she imagined were clinging to him that one time, that one stupid time. She dreamed of his hands where Tommy’s should be, dreamed of his fingers leaving marks on her skin, his nails tearing at her shoulders, his breath hot against her ear. She dreamed of all the things she knows now, all the things she didn’t know then. She dreamed of all the things she can’t take back, all the things she wishes she could, and when she wakes, she feels so sick she can barely stand.

It’s not Oliver she thinks about, then, or even Tommy. It’s Sara. She stares up at the ceiling, watches it swerve, and all she can think of is Sara. Lying cheating Sara. Sara, who slept with her boyfriend. Sara, who ran away. Sara, with her empty coffin and her empty grave. Sara, who isn’t coming back. _Sara, Sara, Sara_ , and when she reaches up to wipe the salt from her face with shaking fingertips, it’s her sister’s she imagines in their place.

She struggles upright, sways, tries to hold herself steady. The room’s still swaying, couch unsteady beneath her, and it’s about half a second before she loses her balance and topples over. The floor’s hard and she lands with an awkward crash, hitting her elbow at an awkward angle. The pain is blinding, and the howl that shakes out of her brings with it another wave of dizziness. She may not be blackout-drunk, but it’s definitely blackout-pain, and nausea slams into her stomach with the force of a blow.

_“Just in case,”_ her dad said before he left, and now she realises what he meant, urgency turning her knuckles white as she grips the rim of the bucket he left out for her. _Just in case_ , because of course he knew this would happen.

She doesn’t vomit, but it’s a close thing. The plastic bends, buckles, and her knees do the same, but she doesn’t let the feeling take her. She doesn’t have much strength left in her — after yesterday, after Tommy, she doesn’t really have anything at all — but she has just enough to remind herself that she’s not like him. It’s a slippery slope, losing control, and she’s not there yet. She’s too stubborn, too practical; she’s an intelligent, successful young woman, and if there’s a little part of her that takes a little too much comfort from remembering those words in her father’s voice, she makes a point of ignoring it.

_I’m not like you,_ she thinks, and at least for now it’s the truth.

So, instead, she breathes. She breathes as best she can, grips the rim of the bucket like it’s a lifeline, waits for the nausea to pass. Even when it’s gone, she stays where it is, holding herself perfectly still until she’s absolutely sure she has control, until she’s absolutely sure that she’s not like him, that she won’t give in this time, and when she finally straightens up it’s with a new sense of purpose.

It’s been a long time since she’s felt this bad, since she’s been this hung over, but in a twisted sort of way it’s kind of comforting. There’s something about the physicality of it, the exhaustion and the queasiness, the headache threatening to drill right through her, something about the sheer hell that her body’s going through that helps her to drown out the other kind of hell. It’s hard to think of Tommy, of his body in a coffin, when she’s fighting to keep from losing her last meal or losing consciousness. It’s hard to think of all the emotional pain she’s been through when the physical pain is damn near crippling. It makes her feel bolder, makes her feel like she can face it, like it can’t hurt her as long as she’s hurting like this. It makes her feel like she might survive after all, and that feeling gives her the strength to stagger up to her feet.

With courage comes confidence, and the nausea dissipates a little as she stands. She doesn’t try to move, doesn’t try to do anything; she just looks around and takes stock of the situation, of the apartment that has never felt so empty, the home that doesn’t feel like home, the strange hollow feeling in her head, emotion giving itself over to the dull throb of the hangover.

She made it. She made it through another funeral, another death, another loss. It feels like it’ll never end, this cycle of grief, of losing the people she loves. Her boyfriend and her sister (her boyfriend _with_ her sister, and that’s a whole different kind of loss), then her mother and her father, the give-and-take of Mom leaving and Dad’s self-destruction (or was it his self-destruction and her leaving? does it even matter?), and finally this, _Tommy_ , the most unfair, the hardest. It’s endless, completely endless, and even this, even _‘I made it’_ doesn’t feel as good as it should. It doesn’t feel like a victory because even now she can feel the fear, the pain, the terrible, awful questions.

What’s next? _Who’s_ next? Who will she bury next time?

It’s a horrible thought, almost cruel. Tommy’s barely even settled into his grave and she’s already counting the minutes until the next one. The next grave, the next funeral, the next coffin with a body in it. It makes her feel cheap, selfish; she doesn’t want to forget him so quickly, so easily, but the fear is bigger than she is. She turns towards the kitchen, turns away from the thoughts, the slowly surfacing guilt, turns away from all the things she can’t outrun.

_Tea_ , she thinks. Tea and toast and a warm blanket while she waits for her stomach to settle and her head to stop pounding. That’s the first thing, the most important thing. Get herself back into some kind of shape so she can at least face the world outside, so she can at least give the appearance of holding herself together. If she learned just one thing from all those years in law school, it’s that appearances are everything.

So then, that first. Appearances. Look the part. Look like a professional, like an intelligent and successful young woman, like the kind of daughter her father would be proud of, the kind of daughter he wouldn’t worry about like he did last night. Look like the kind of daughter who would never turn out like him.

Look the part. That’s what matters, even if it’s not true.

Besides, how many cases were ever won with the truth?

—

Her dad calls around mid-morning.

She has a vague memory of him threatening to do that, a hazy echo of his voice, his lips against her forehead, the worry rippling through him. She doesn’t remember much that’s tangible, but she remembers the way his voice broke, the way her heart did, because he sounded small and weak, so much like the down-and-out she had to take care of so many times after Sara. It’s a bad memory, a threat of places she doesn’t want to go, things she doesn’t want to see or feel, and she shakes it off, focuses on the present, the static on the line and the question in his voice.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks without preamble.

He knows his stuff, and it’s obvious that he’s expecting her to feel like hell, because he can’t disguise the surprise when she forces a smile into her voice, a lightness that comes a little easier after a little hot chamomile.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Didn’t I say you were worrying about nothing?” Maybe not; she can’t exactly recall the details, but it sounds like the sort of thing she’d say if she was trying a little too hard. Which is exactly the sort of thing she does when she’s drunk and overcompensating. “Not everything is a drama, dad.”

He sighs, the sound carrying all the more weight through the bad connection. “You’re right,” he concedes. “You’re right and I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.”

“Yeah, you should have.” The anger comes quickly, instinctively, just like it did yesterday, and she hates that it’s still right there, that it’s still waiting for her even after she drank it all away. “I’m okay, dad.”

“Sure you are,” he shoots back. “Until you’re not.”

He’s sighing again, and the part of her that isn’t irrationally seething feels a little guilty that she’s the one making him do it, that she’s the reason he keeps sounding so hopeless. Not so long ago, she was the one making mid-morning phone-calls, making sure that he’d slept off his hangover, making sure that he’d eaten something, that he’d drunk something other than whiskey, that he was able to go to work. Not so long ago, she was the one putting him to bed, making sure he had a bucket next to his head, ‘just in case’, making sure he wouldn’t choke if he rolled over in his sleep. Not so long ago, this was the part she had to play, and he’s not earned the right to take it back.

“Dad,” she warns, and the tremors in her voice have nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with anger.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s just… it’s my job to worry about you, y’know? It’s part of being a parent, and you can’t just switch it off because you’re worrying over nothing. You can’t just…” He trails off, and she’s kind of glad that she can’t see him, that they’re doing this over the phone, because she couldn’t deal with the sight of his face right now. “You’ve been through a lot, kiddo. We both have. And whether you want it or not, I’m still gonna worry about you, right up until the day I—”

“Don’t.” The cracks in her voice shatter like glass. “Don’t you dare say it. Don’t even think it. Not today.”

That must’ve struck a chord, because he doesn’t say anything for a very long time. She can feel the regret humming through the static on the line, and she imagines the look on his face, shame and self-loathing and guilt. He should know better, she thinks, and she’s too angry to make it easier for him, too angry to step back and tell him that it’s okay, that she knows he didn’t mean it that way, that she understands what he was trying to say even if the way he said it was stupid and irresponsible.

She’s too angry, though, too angry to make sense, too angry to do anything but seethe. It’s just like the way she was angry with Oliver at the funeral when Moira the co-conspirator was standing right by his side, just like the way she hates with the vigilante when everyone knows that Malcolm Merlyn was responsible. Again and again, it keeps coming back, this irrepressible anger shooting off at all the wrong people.

“Dad.” It’s her voice, but she doesn’t remember saying it. “Dad, I have to go. You shouldn’t…” Her throat is dry, sore, and there’s a jaggedness to her voice that sounds painful even to her own ears. She needs some water, she thinks, and clings to the simplicity of it. “You shouldn’t worry about me. After everything we’ve been through…”

“I know.” She closes her eyes, tries to block out the sound of another sigh. “I know, sweetheart. But I’m here, okay? You need anything, I’m here. I don’t care if you think it sounds silly. You call me and I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks.”

The word rings hollow, though, and the dead line when she hangs up is so much more comforting than his voice.

—

She spends the rest of the morning in the shower.

It’s such a cliche, like she’s trying to wash the hurt away, like a little soap and hot water can scrub off all the injustice, the heartache and the stench of death, like the perfume scent of snowdrops and winter apples will somehow make her into something new, like the scent alone can turn the seasons, turn the time, like it really will be winter just because it smells like it.

She knows it doesn’t really work that way, knows there’s no logic to it, but still there’s a kind of comfort that comes with familiarity, a smell or a routine, something that feels normal. Maybe that’s why it’s such a cliche in the first place. People are drawn to things they can make sense of, things they don’t have to think about, don’t have to work at, things they recognise without thought. It makes it easier to keep from thinking at all, makes it easier to breathe. It’s easier to exist in a world as simple as hot water and the smell of winter.

So, for a while at least, that’s what she does. She _exists_ , nothing more, soaking up the familiarity, the promise of a season that’s still half a year away.

She’s a little shaky when she shuts off the water, light-headed and dizzy, and she stumbles as she reaches for her towel. She can feel her breakfast shifting in her stomach, an unpleasant churning that radiates out and turns the sweat cold between her shoulders. She can feel the dull throb starting up in in her head, too, hates how quickly it’s come back; it didn’t even wait a minute, didn’t even wait for the steam to dissipate. It’s just like the anger, slamming into her like a freight-train the instant the water stopped drumming it away. It was nice while it lasted, the peace and solace of the shower, but the hangover is back now that her skin is cooling, and with it all the emotion she’s been trying to silence. She’s not sure if it’s coffee that she needs, or painkillers, and so she opts for both.

Coffee is a bad choice; she gets about two mouthfuls down before it starts to clash with the tea still swimming in her. Apparently chamomile isn’t so calming when it has to play with others, and coffee gets mean when it has to share a room. Between them, they turn her knuckles white again, make her breathing ragged, make her curse her bad decisions all over again. On a good day, she might force down the rest of the cup just to show it who’s boss, just to prove that she can, but she’s in no condition to test her tolerance right now, and so she gives up.

Caffeine’s a bad habit anyway, she thinks, and chokes down the painkillers instead.

The headache fades after half an hour or so, but the grinding in her stomach sticks around to make her miserable. It’s a strange kind of nausea, the kind that has her lying miserably on the couch with one hand on the bucket while simultaneously crying out for something sickeningly sweet or devastatingly deep-fried.

Eating is about the last thing she wants to do right now, what with her pitiful toast breakfast still threatening to resurface, but apparently her keen lawyer’s mind isn’t in the driving seat just now. More likely, it’s the other part of her that’s telling her what she needs, the part that had to play caretaker for her dad when he suffered through mornings like this, the part that had to hold him at gunpoint to get him to eat something substantial to soak up the alcohol.

It’s kind of antithetical, eating heavy when you feel like hell, but it’s not like it could possibly make her feel any worse than she already does. Besides, it brought Dad back from the brink more times than she could count, and she’s not opposed to falling back on his old habits to help herself fight off a new one.

Maybe she’s more like him than she wants to admit.

—

Her stomach categorically refuses to even think of anything deep-fried, so she ends up at the ice-cream parlour.

She works her way through a tub of vanilla, slow and steady, breathing deep and carefully between each bite. It’s not the most exciting flavour in the world, and most days she doesn’t care for it, but it’s about the only thing on the fifty-two-flavour menu that doesn’t make her gag, and once it’s sitting in front of her it does its job. Her stomach welcomes the cold, and it slides down comfortably over a throat that feels strange and raw. As bad choices go, this was definitely one of the better ones.

She’s about halfway through the tub, three-quarters of the way towards a sugar-coma, and almost entirely fixed on giving up and going home when she realises she’s not alone.

“Oliver.” The name is an accusation, and she’s too tired to even try to stifle it. “How long have you been here?”

If he notices the attitude, he’s polite enough not to react. “Oh, about three _‘why me’_ s and a couple of _‘kill me now’_ s.” He’s grinning like an idiot, but he’s not fooling her; there’s a wisp of something serious beneath the million-dollar charm, pain and pity, and she can feel the anger surfacing in her all over again. “You okay?”

“It’s not even lunchtime yet, and I’m halfway through a tub of ice-cream,” she points out. “What do you think?”

“I think…” He stops himself before he can say it, though, and the ghost of a grin falls off his face.

He doesn’t need to say it, though; she can hear the words as clearly now as if he’d yelled them at the top of his voice. _I think we need to talk._

The point’s valid enough, she can’t deny that. There’s so much still up in the air between them, and it’s only going to get harder the longer they wait to clear it; they both know that, though it’s kind of strange that Ollie’s the one with the courage to face it this time. Valid or not, though, it’s too soon. It’s too damn soon, and it hurts too much to think about it. Besides, who does he think he is, intruding on her quiet time like this, just to bring up issues better left buried?

“He’s not even cold,” she says aloud, and doesn’t even stop to realise that he never actually said the words, that she’s attacking him just for a thought he might or might not have had. “He’s not even settled in his grave yet. For the love of God, Ollie, he’s not even…” Saying it makes her feel sick again, in a way that’s very different to the hangover, so she cuts herself off before the feeling can swell. “The funeral was yesterday. It was _yesterday_. The dust isn’t even settled yet, and now you want to talk about ‘us’?”

He’s blinking very fast now, staring at her like he doesn’t recognise her, like he’s never seen her before in his life. “I don’t want to talk about ‘us’,” he says, speaking slowly and carefully, like he’s approaching a wild animal.

That stops her in her tracks. She swallows, tastes vanilla and a trace of tea. “You don’t?”

“Of course not.” He turns away, raking both hands through his hair, and she wants to apologise for leaping to conclusions, for attacking him, but if she so much as opens her mouth right now she’ll vomit for sure. “I just wanted to see how you were doing. That’s all. I swear.”

It’s a lie. She knows it because she knows him, because she’s seen this before, the way his shoulders go tight, the way he turns his face away so that she won’t see the way he’s flushing, the way his eyes dart to the floor, to the ceiling, to anything he can find that stops him from looking at her. She’s known him too long, knows him too well, and apparently five years thinking he’s dead don’t amount to much in the end, because here he is, standing front of her, the same old Ollie she knew back then.

She waits a few moments, breathing deep. She wants to challenge him, wants to tell him to speak his mind or get the hell out of her sights. She wants to say a lot of things, but there’s not a single part of her body that has the strength for that kind of fight, and so she doesn’t. Her hands are shaking, so she occupies them by playing with the little plastic ice-cream spoon, bending it backwards until it snaps. The clean break gives her a kind of courage, tightening the muscles in her stomach until she trusts herself to speak.

“Well,” she says at last. “As you can see, I’m doing just fine. So you can run along now.”

Apparently she’s not the only one who needs a moment, who needs to check her body’s responses before she can talk, because his whole body is tight as steel wire, and she doesn’t need to see the sudden unease on his face to recognise it in the shuffling of his feet, the clenching of his jaw, the way he moves. Something’s wrong, she realises, and wishes she could take back her accusations.

“Yeah,” he says after a long moment. “Funny you should put it like that…”

She stands up. It’s a little too fast, and her head’s still more than a little fuzzy, but she’s functional enough to stay upright for the time being. “Ollie?”

When he sighs, he uses the whole of his body. It’s not like the way her dad sighs, quiet little breaths that fills the sad place inside her that’s only for Lances. It’s not like the way her mother sighs, frustrated and tired over the buzz of static during their once-a-month phone-calls. It’s not like the way Tommy used to sigh, eager and open, heavy and heady and so beautiful, beautiful like he was, like he believed she was. It’s just Oliver, just _Ollie_ , and he sighs like he does everything else, like the world will live or die depending on how his breath moves.

“I think I’m gonna go away for a while,” he says, and though he’s trying so hard to be casual about it she can see the strain, how hard it’s been for him to get to this place, to reach this decision. “I need to get away from the city. Away from…”

_Tommy,_ Laurel thinks.

“Your mother,” she says out loud, and takes a vindictive kind of pleasure in the way his shoulders stiffen. “Are you really going to walk out on her?”

“I’ll be back before it goes to trial,” he snaps, like that’s worth anything, like he’s not still the same selfish Ollie he was before the _Gambit_.

Fact is, that’s not good enough. Part of her wants to shrug it off, shrug him off, just turn around and walk away like he would have done, like he did six years ago with Sara, like he clearly wants to do now. It’s a bitter part, vengeful and just a little calloused, the part of her that still can’t quite forgive him for the horrible things she sees when she looks into his eyes and finds her reflection impossibly distorted.

It’s pointless, though. If she turns around and walks away, storms out and leaves him with his regrets and the half-melted remains of her ice-cream, where will that get either of them? He’s not here for forgiveness or advice; if he was, he’d never have chosen her. He would’ve gone to his sister, his friends, maybe even that bodyguard of his, but he sure as hell wouldn’t have gone to the one person in the world who calls him on his crap. He’s not here to listen to what she has to say, that much is obvious, and he doesn’t care if she walks away or not.

After a long and awkward moment, he finally turns around. His eyes are bright, tortured, and for a second or two Laurel imagines her reflection replaced by a panoramic view of the island that held him for so long. She doesn’t know the first thing about the place, doesn’t know what it’s like; the only thing she knows is the scars it left on his body, long white lines gouged out from once-perfect skin, the same lines that she traced not so long ago with her hands and her mouth, before the earthquake, before _Tommy_ , before—

“Ollie.” Her voice is a rasp.

“I just thought you should know,” he says, and it’s not Ollie, not her Ollie, the Ollie that used to be hers. It’s the other Oliver, the island Oliver, the one she doesn’t know at all. “I just… I didn’t want you to worry. I know we have a lot to talk about, but it’s…”

“It’s not the right time,” she finishes for him, gratitude thickening the words. “I know. I mean, you’re right. We need time. We need to… to…”

“Process.” It’s just like him, just like both of them, finishing each other’s sentences, making even the hard parts a little less brutal, understanding even if they’re not exactly communicating. It’s everything that was right about their relationship, and everything that was wrong too. “Yeah…”

Laurel shuts her eyes, blocks out the right and remembers the wrong. “Yeah.”

His hands are warm, larger than she remembers, wrapping easily around her arms, holding her close just like he used to. “Laurel,” he says, like this is helping, like he can fix the pain she’s been through, the pain they’ve both been through, just by saying her name.

“It’s okay,” she says, though they both know it’s not. “It’s fine, Ollie. Okay? You do what you have to, and I…” She thinks of the vigilante, the so-called hero who left Tommy to die. “I guess I’ll do the same.”

He stops her before she can move off, before she can turn away like he did, before she can hide her face. “So, uh…”

She locks her gaze on the checkered tablecloth, the snapped spoon, the liquid drizzle of melted vanilla; he always had a way of talking to her, of seducing her, and she doesn’t want to look at him now. “What?”

“I know I shouldn’t ask…” He’s right, he shouldn’t, but they both know that’s not going to stop him. “Look, I know you don’t owe me anything. Believe me, I know that. But it’s… well, it’s _you_. You know? And whatever other crap went down, whatever other stupid shit I did, you were always…” He takes a breath, and when he lets it out it’s shaky. “I could always count on you.”

“Wish I could say the same for you,” she says, very quietly.

He takes the hit with a grimace, and maybe he’s grown up a little more than she’s given him credit for because he doesn’t shy away from the truth of it. “Me too,” he says softly. “But we can’t…” He shakes his head, shakes off the conversation that neither of them are ready to have just yet. “Look, I was just wondering… hoping, really…”

Laurel rolls her eyes, winces as the headache sparks again. “Spit it out, Ollie.”

“Could you keep an eye on Mom and Thea while I’m away?”

A thousand different thoughts run through her head at once, some kind and some cruel, but the one that spills out is, “You want me to ‘keep an eye’ on your mother?”

He looks sheepish, flushing just a little as he sets his jaw. “Well, you know…”

“I know,” she snaps, cutting him off. “I know your mother. I know that she’s waiting to stand trial for her part in the death of over five hundred people, including Tommy. I know—”

“Laurel.”

He doesn’t try to argue, doesn’t tell her that his mother was an innocent victim, that she was just some helpless pawn in Malcolm Merlyn’s sadistic game of chess. Maybe he realises that it won’t help, that even just hearing the name ‘Merlyn’ is going to break her right now, that the last thing she needs is to remember her that the real villain in all of this of is poor dead Tommy’s father.

The thought makes her want to scream. She thinks of her own dad, remembers hazy half-moments from last night in her apartment, his face, his voice, his tenderness, the way he cared. She remembers how worried he was, how quick to try and protect her, even if it was just from herself, the person she wanted to become for just one night. He was so afraid of seeing his demons when he looked at her, the demons he’s spent so long fighting, the demons he is so afraid might be inside of her too. All she did was drink a little too much for once in her life, and he was there by her side, as scared and helpless as if she’d taken a bullet or landed herself in the hospital. All she did was make one stupid decision, and to him it was like the world was ending.

And it’s not just because of what it meant to him, the drink demons that still paralyse him with his own kind of fear, the whispering voices of a potential relapse hiding behind every half-filled glass. It’s not just because she was drunk, because she was drinking, because she was dancing with his old vices. It’s not about what she did; it’s about how she felt, who she is, what she means to him. She’s his daughter and she’s in pain, so much pain that she’d do stupid things. She’s hurting, and of course he would move heaven and earth to protect her. That’s what fathers do.

Her father, anyway. But Tommy’s…

She chokes on a sob, sudden and violent. She hates that Ollie’s there to see it, hates that his arms sweep around to hold her close, hold her safe and warm and protected, hold her like they’ve held her a thousand times before. She tries to pull away, tries to pull herself together and tell him that she’s fine, that she doesn’t need him, that she never did, but all she can think of is Tommy dying in that place all alone. Tommy, abandoned by his father, his friends, even the vigilante who was supposed to save him. In the moment when it mattered the most, the last moment of his life, he didn’t have anyone. He had _no-one_ , and it’s sick and wrong that Laurel has so much now, that she has Ollie’s arms around her, his warmth and his protection, that she has her father’s tenderness, his thoughtfulness, his bucket beside her couch, his _‘just in case’_. It’s sick and wrong, and she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want her father, doesn’t want Ollie, doesn’t want anything that might make her feel better, that might pretend she deserves to feel anything at all. She just wants Tommy. She just wants him to know that he was loved after all.

She wrenches away from Ollie, out of his arms, shoving blindly. Her fist catches him square in the chest, and he stumbles back a step or two, eyes wide with something that looks like surprise but isn’t. It’s like he expected this, like he knew it would happen, like he knows her as well as her father does, like he sees the same dangers behind her behaviour that he does, the same demons threatening to seduce her. She hates that, hates that everyone can see her, that everyone knows her; it makes her feel vulnerable, exposed and helpless, and she forces down the feeling by lashing out again.

Oliver doesn’t stumble this time, but there’s a tremor rocking his frame as he stands there and takes it. “Laurel.”

It’s a long moment before she regains control of herself, and even then it’s tenuous. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” he says, though he must know that she doesn’t mean it; her teeth are too tightly clenched, voice too raw, and even someone as blind and blithe as Oliver Queen must be able to see how much it’s taking out of her to keep from punching him again.

She turns away, eyes stinging, hiding from the way he pierces them. “I’ll keep an eye on Thea,” she tells him. “And your…” But _‘mother’_ is too close to _‘father’_ , and her heart threatens to shatter. “…and Moira.”

Ollie’s hand is warm against her back, heat soaking through her shirt. “Thank you,” he says. “I’d really appreciate it.”

It’s unexpected, the way they words stick, the way they sting. She doesn’t turn back, but her whole body goes rigid, and she knows that he notices because he starts to say her name again, starts to shape it into something that might pass for an apology. She recognises the sound, the softness of the first syllable, and she can’t let him finish, can’t let him end with the second. She can’t. Because she knows it’s not his fault, knows he’s not really the one she’s angry with. Really, if she’s honest, she also kind of understands why she’s the one he’s asking to do this; fact is, without Tommy, they’re the only ones left; who else would he ask to keep his family safe?

So no, she won’t let him apologise, won’t let him take the blame for something he hasn’t done, won’t let him hand over a victory she hasn’t earned. She’s hurting, yes, but as angry as she is, as deeply as she feels it when she looks at him and thinks of all the reasons why it doesn’t make sense, in her heart she knows that there’s nothing he can do to make right a wrong that isn’t there. He’s not the Hood, not a wannabe hero who lets down the very people he’s trying to save. He’s not like that, and apologising now for something neither of them truly understands won’t help anyone. It’ll just make things worse.

There’s only one person in the city who should be apologising, she thinks, and it’s not Oliver.

“Laurel…” he starts, and there’s that second syllable, tearing through her like a knife.

“Fine,” she says, stopping him before he can say anything more, before he can hurt either one of them more than they already are. She takes a step, then another one, lets the rhythm and the distance keep her steady, keep her strong. “I hope you find what you want, Ollie, wherever you end up. Because you sure as hell won’t find it here.”

“I know.” His voice is as rough as hers.

“Of course you do.” She leans against the doorframe, letting him see all the weakness in her, a final memory of all the pain he’s leaving behind. A parting gift, of a kind. “So, then. Off you go.”

_And take that worthless vigilante with you._

—


	4. Chapter 4

—

It’s a good few days before she keeps her promise.

First and foremost, she has to get her own life in order. That’s just practical, and while she knows perfectly well that Oliver is anything but practical even at the best of times, not even he could deny that that’s the important thing for her right now. She can’t very well take care of his family if she can’t even take care of herself, now, can she? Even the infamous Queen playboy would have to admit that it makes sense. Even he wouldn’t begrudge her a few days or a week to pick up the debris of her own grief before she starts wading into the mess he left behind, would he?

Well, she thinks, it doesn’t matter if he would or not. He’s not here, and that means he doesn’t get a say in where she places her priorities.

So then, she throws herself into her own problems, pushes down the grief and the pain, the directionless anger and the urge to drown it in late nights and headaches. She throws herself into something she can fix, something she can deal with. Specifically, and just like the last time, she throws herself into work.

CNRI is not much more than a pile of rubble after the earthquake, and that makes it a whole lot harder to spend her days and nights in the office. It makes it a whole lot harder for her to displace her own feelings onto the suffering of her clients, to temper that unfocused rage into righteous fury and love of the law. She’s jobless now, adrift, and though there’s an undeniable part of her that wants to go back, to rebuild and reforge CNRI into something bigger and better, something new, she doesn’t. It would help, she knows, even if just to prove some stupid point, to show the Malcolm Merlyns of the world that they will not win; it would give her something to do, some way of proving to the world that she’s not helpless, but still something holds her back.

On a fundamental level, a level she can’t quite reach, it feels wrong. She can’t put it any better than that, can’t make it make any more sense: it just feels _wrong_. Legal Aid, helping the helpless for the sheer love of it… the idea leaves a sour taste in her mouth, makes her feel hypocritical. The Glades have never been more in need of people like her than they are right now, but it is so damn hard to think of trying to do right by them when she can’t stop thinking of Tommy, of the vigilante who left him to do, and it is so hard to do good rage has flooded in to drown the old compassion.

She’s not the doe-eyed graduate she was, fresh out of law school and filled to bursting with good intentions and plans to save the world. She was grieving then, too, but it was a positive kind of grief, a productive kind. Back then, she was a firestorm of fervour, armed with her father’s moral code and her mother’s passion, determined to not let the world and its betrayal grind her down. She was so naive, so idealistic; all she wanted was a chance to do good, to do right, to make some kind of a difference to the people who needed it most. She was so young, so bright, and so damn _stupid_.

She doesn’t want that any more. She doesn’t want to do good, doesn’t want to do right by the people who need it. She doesn’t want to reach out and help the helpless, doesn’t want to waste her time fighting hopeless causes, doesn’t want to look to the law and wonder why it needs her.

Now all she want is justice.

—

It’s not a coincidence that she goes to Iron Heights on the same morning she hands in her application to the DA’s office.

Her hopes aren’t high, but she doesn’t particularly care. She’s through with playing it safe, through with doing things the easy way, with staying on the right side of the road; if she wants something, she has to grab it with both hands, and though there’s a greater chance of another man-made earthquake than there is of Kate Spencer hiring an out-of-work CNRI idealist with two names to her reference list, she doesn’t care. What’s the worst that can happen? Another addition to her ever-growing stack of rejection letters? After everything she’s been through, it’s not exactly a soul-shattering loss.

As sure as she is that it’s probably a waste of time, still she can’t help feeling like she’s accomplished something, like she’s at least making an effort to reach beyond her grasp. It’s more than her dad managed after Sara, anyway, and that’s reason enough to resurrect what little faith she once had in herself, the shred of self-respect that wasn’t destroyed by the quake or buried along with Tommy. It makes her feel resourceful, in control of her own life, at least for as long as it takes to hand in the application, makes her feel like maybe she’ll be a lawyer again after all.

So, then, what better time to make good on her promise to check in on Malcolm Merlyn’s right hand?

Moira’s surprised to see her, of course, and she doesn’t even try to hide it. “Laurel.”

Laurel’s starting to notice a definite trend in the way the Queens say her name, like she’s a new and unexpected thing, like she’s an intruder on their familiy, even though she’s been practically a part of it for almost as long as either of them can remember. “Moira,” she counters, keeping her tone light.

Moira allows a ghost of a smile at that, memory overpowering the disbelief for a moment. “When they told me I had a visitor, I can’t say yours was the face I expected to see.”

That’s fair enough, Laurel supposes. If not for Oliver and his stupid conscience, she probably would never have come here at all. Moira clearly doesn’t expect any sympathy, even from one-time family friends; it’s pretty clear from the look on her face that she’s expecting resentment, judgement, even some of that justifiable rage that has been boiling Laurel alive ever since the funeral. It makes her sad, at least in the little corner of herself that’s still able to feel sad through all the anger, all the ways she hates Ollie for making her do this, all the ways she wishes she could hate Moira instead.

“Oliver’s out of town,” she explains; it’s a habit she picked up in law school, speaking without preamble, foregoing the niceties in deference to the facts, and Moira seems to appreciate it. “He asked me to check up on you.”

There’s more than exhaustion in the way Moira sighs; it’s a kind of resignation, really, like she’s more surprised by her son’s choice of babysitter than she is by the fact that he’d hire one in the first place. It’s sad, Laurel thinks, and tries not to think too hard about the fact that she has more sympathy for the woman on trial for mass murder than the son who hasn’t done anything wrong at all.

“I suppose he thinks I can’t take care of myself in here.” Moira’s voice is wry, but weighted.

Laurel musters a smile, doesn’t bother trying to deny it. “From my experience, he doesn’t think much at all,” she says; it comes out a little bitter, a little cold, and she doesn’t fail to notice the way Moira’s shoulders tighten, like she’s bracing for a blow, and it’s a decade’s worth of instinct that bows her head and forces an apology out of her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s quite all right.” Moira’s smile is too clipped and too precise, like a muscle tightening to the point of spasm. “I know my son and his tendencies quite well.”

“We both do,” Laurel says, sharp and biting. Then, because she can’t think of anything else, because she no longer has anything in common with this woman she once knew so well, “I hear it won’t be long before they fix a date for the trial.”

Moira chuckles; it’s weak, more polite than sincere, but it’s still a sweet gesture, thoughtful that she’d try. “You always were an optimist, Laurel.”

The idea is so absurd, so ridiculous, so far removed from everything Laurel sees in herself right now, that she bursts out laughing. It’s not a wan polite chuckle like Moira’s, a pasted-on smile while she counts down the seconds until this is over; it’s an explosion of shattered glass, violent and destructive, exactly like the funeral. It’s wild, a little bit dangerous, and by the time it’s done, by the time the explosion is over, the violence and the destruction, by the time it’s all burned itself out, Moira’s staring at her like she’s the one who should be incarcerated instead, and in a place far more well-padded than a prison cell.

“I’m sorry,” Laurel says again, though she doesn’t know what for.

Moira’s features soften, guilt and self-loathing colouring something that’s all too familiar, the maternal sympathy that Laurel leaned on so heavily after Oliver and Sara, after Mom left, after Dad started drinking, after everything that left her so alone. She had no right, they both know that, but Moira never turned her away, never made her feel bad about needing someone, about needing a family when hers was falling apart. She always looked at her like she knew, like she understood, even when she couldn’t do or say anything to make it better, even when she couldn’t be the things that Laurel wanted her to be. She couldn’t help, but at least she understood. She saw her then, and she sees her again now, sees the tears behind the laughter, the different kind of violence blazing beneath the explosion, sees them both the way they were six years ago.

“Have you been eating?” she asks, like that’s the most natural question in the world, like they really are there instead of here. “You look thin.”

“I…” The lie dies in her throat, though, and maybe it’s a mother thing, the way she can’t bring herself to say the words, because she always did find it harder to lie to Moira than to Oliver. “I’m okay, Moira. I—”

“I’m sure you are,” Moira replies with a knowing little half-smile. “But that’s not what I asked.”

Laurel swallows, looks away. She thinks back to her breakfast this morning, cereal that she didn’t eat, remembers how the milk went sour because she forgot to put it back in the fridge until three hours later. Little things like that are so difficult, so painful. Remembering to eat, to keep the fridge stocked… it’s hard work, really hard work.

She doesn’t want Moira to know that, though. Notwithstanding that Moira has enough to worry about in her, notwithstanding that she has five hundred and three other problems looming over her shoulder, the simple fact is that she doesn’t want to think about it herself, either. She was feeling so good when she came out here, so accomplished and so confident, all fired up with the idea of working for the DA, of being someone, of getting her foot into a door that feels right, of steeping into a world that works for the kind of person she’s becoming. She doesn’t want to backslide now, doesn’t want to look into Moira’s eyes and see the same distorted reflection of her face that she saw when she looked in Oliver’s. It’s a tradition, she thinks, albeit a screwed-up one, the way that Queens look at Lances.

“I’m eating,” she says, and looks down at her hands. “I’m…”

But she still can’t bring herself to lie. She won’t accept the truth, won’t admit out loud that she isn’t doing as well as she wants the world to believe, but she can’t lie about it either. Not to Moira.

It’s so hard to look at her now, to see the new lines on the old familiar face, to recognise through the grief and the guilt the same woman she knew way back when, before the _Gambit_ , before _“let’s move in together”_ , before there was a _them_ to talk about. Back when she and Ollie were just friends, stupid kids with stupid crushes, dancing around each other like the awkward teenagers they were, back when the class divide — the billionaire Queens and the middle-class Lances — didn’t seem so big. Back when things were normal, when they were normal, when Moira had no reason to see her as family but she did anyway.

Moira wasn’t family then, and she isn’t family now, but it’s kind of hard to remember that when Laurel remembers so clearly what it was like back then, and what it became all those years later. Ollie and Sara, the _Gambit_ , loss on loss on loss. It’s so hard to remember that Moira wasn’t hers to claim when she remembers how it felt, how lonely she was, how alone. Dad was drinking, Mom was gone, and it was so easy to see shadows of Oliver in the way that Moira would duck her head, the way her mouth would tighten when she was upset, the way she leaned against the wall in those vast empty mansion corridors and Laurel would wish her own home could be so quiet. It was so easy to cling to the only person who wasn’t leaving her, and Moira was too upset, too guilty, to turn her away.

It’s hard to look at her now, in that hideous prison jumpsuit, shamed and shame-faced. It’s hard to think of the things she’s done, the thing she was a part of, the role she played in Tommy’s death. Laurel should hate her, should feel so betrayed, should feel the way she did when she found out about Ollie and Sara; she’s got all the anger, all the rage, the hatred eating her from inside, and it should be no task at all to turn that on this woman, this murderer sitting in front of her. She should hate Moira Queen for everything she’s done, all the trust she’s betrayed. She should feel sick at the sight of her, should be shouting across the table, screaming and swearing and sobbing, but she’s not. Looking at her, she realises that for the first time since the funeral she’s not angry at all.

“Laurel.” There’s a sad smile on her face, heartache paved over with courage and strength. “I’ve got enough to worry about in here, don’t you think? Don’t make me worry about you too.”

Laurel thinks of Ollie again, and there’s the anger, slamming into her chest as though it never left. She barely had a moment to enjoy the quiet, and now it’s gone again, shattered with a vision of his eyes, his face, his voice.

He should be here, not her. He should be comforting his mother, telling her that he’ll do whatever it takes to see her cleared of all charges, being the dutiful son that he couldn’t be for so long. This should be his job, not Laurel’s, and she hates him for putting her in this position, hates him for putting Moira here too, for making them look at each other, making them remember the last time he wasn’t there. He shouldn’t have asked her to do this, shouldn’t have thrust this moment on either of them. For both their sakes, hers and Moira’s, for the first time in his life, Oliver Queen should have been man enough to do something himself.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and they both know she’s not apologising for her poor eating habits. “I’m so sorry, Moira.”

Moira leans in, lays one hand over both of Laurel’s. “They have a cafeteria for visitors,” she says. “I can’t vouch for the quality myself, of course, but…” The smile flickers, albeit just for a moment. “It’ll put my mind at ease.”

It takes everything she has, every ounce of the strength she’d thought had abandoned her, but Laurel digs deep and musters a smile. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll grab a sandwich.”

Moira squeezes her wrist, tight but so tender. “Good girl.”

—

It’s not the first lie she’s told and it surely won’t be the last, but it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth just the same.

As soon as she’s done with Moira, she heads straight to Verdant. It’s not so much because she wants to check on Thea, so much as because she wants to wash away the taste of Iron Heights, the memories of a very different Moira Queen, a very different kind of compassion, a very different kind of grief shared like breath between them. She needs a drink, frankly, and Verdant’s the first place she can think of. The fact that Thea’s working there now, that she’s taken up ownership in her brother’s absence… it’s as much an unhappy coincidence as it is a happy one.

Loathe as she is to admit it, Thea’s always been a bit of a problem. She’s so angry, so filled with resentment, and heaven knows Laurel can relate to that, but it doesn’t make it easy to try and connect with her. It was a problem after the _Gambit_ , and she doesn’t doubt for a second that it’ll be a problem again now. Laurel understands the impulse, she really does, and maybe that makes her the most fitting person for the task, but how do you convince someone that you’re good for them when they don’t want to know? More, how do you convince yourself that you’re good for them when you don’t feel good for anything either? She and Thea are a little too alike, sometimes, at least in the way they handle grief, and they burn against each other like oil mixed with water.

It’s a strange feeling. Well, it’s two strange feelings, really: empathy and responsibility. Ollie tasked her with keeping an eye on his family, and though he would be the first to admit that they’re way past the point of owing each other favours, that Laurel doesn’t owe him a damn thing after what he put her through, still she feels like she owes it to the rest of the Queens to be there if she can. Ollie might still be trouble himself, but Moira was good to her when she needed it, and Thea is so much an innocent in everything around her that Laurel’s heart breaks to see her sometimes. She may not owe anything to Ollie, but the Queen mansion was her second home for too large a chunk of her life to turn her back on it now.

But then there’s the empathy, the thing that makes her so good for Thea and so bad for her at the same time. Because yes, she understands, probably better than anyone else in Thea’s life right now. She recognised all too well the rage and resentment in Thea’s eyes at Tommy’s funeral, darkened shadows of the same teenage rebellion that sparked in her after the _Gambit_. It was so close to Laurel’s own rage, so dangerous close, and even back then there was a part of her that wanted to reach out, to let Thea fill the void that Sara left behind, to give herself someone to take care of, someone to protect. But then, she was bitter too, and angry, and full of the same violence she saw in Thea, the same violence she saw in her again at the funeral; thinking of replacing Sara was too much like admitting she was gone, too much like accepting the things she did, and she wasn’t ready for that.

She’s still not ready for it, in truth. Thea’s growing up fast; she’s growing into a clever and resourceful young woman, the kind who bears more than a passing resemblance to Laurel in her law school heyday. She’ll break more than just hearts when she’s a bit older, but right now she’s still an angry girl who has seen too many bad things. She needs guidance, and it feels like a personal failure that Laurel has never been able to offer it.

The place is all but deserted when she walks in. Thea’s got her head down over the bar, poring over paperwork, and she doesn’t so much glance up when Laurel says her name.

It’s a little embarrassing, how predictable this is, the show of defiance; if she hadn’t given Ollie the exact same treatment herself more times than she can count, Laurel would almost be amused. Instead, because she understands too well and wishes she didn’t understand at all, she just sighs and tries again.

“Thea?”

Though she still doesn’t look up, Thea at least graces her with a reply this time. “You here to order something?”

Laurel chuckles, wry and humourless. “I’m not sure you’re old enough to serve me,” she says.

It’s a weak attempt at humour, but it’s also true. Fact is, there are few things Laurel wouldn’t do for a stiff drink right now, and the chuckle dies gasping in her throat as she thinks about that, about how desperate she is for something strong and stiff and strangling, for something that burns away her thoughts, her feelings, burns away everything, for something that’ll drown the taste of Iron Heights, of Moira, of her memories, of everything.

Thea, of all people, would probably understand that, but maybe the truth cuts a little too close for her as well because she doesn’t even crack a smile. “I’m serious,” she says, as if her attitude hadn’t already made that painfully obvious. “I’m kind of busy here, Laurel, so if you’re not here to order something…”

It’s too exhausting to even try and keep up the facade, and it’s not like it’s working anyway, so Laurel surrenders with a tired sigh. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll bite. You got any peanuts?”

Thea scribbles a note on the paper, then shoves it aside, and when she finally does look up, she’s characteristically pissed. “Peanuts,” she echoes, like the word is the worst insult imaginable.

“Why not?” Laurel shrugs, tries to keep it breezy. It’s not exactly going smoothly, this whatever-it-is, but at least she’s got Thea talking, and if law school taught her anything it’s that that’s half the battle. “I can’t imagine what you’d think of me if I came in here ordering jello shots when it’s not even lunchtime…”

Thea snorts, rummaging behind the bar. “I’d think that you and Ollie were a better match than anyone realised.”

Laurel tries not to react to that, tries not to let Ollie’s little sister see the dark places those innocent words take her. She keeps her head down, keeps Thea from seeing the shadows in her eyes, the memories of that night in her apartment, the heat and the passion and all those bad decisions; she definitely doesn’t want Thea to see the fallout, the horrible things those memories make her feel, the shame and the guilt and the horror that follows when her thoughts turn inevitably back to Tommy. He was so sweet, so trusting… and even though a part of her knows that it doesn’t really count as cheating, it doesn’t make it any easier to live with what she’s done.

“Maybe,” she manages after a long moment, and her voice is much more choked than she hoped it would be. “But even if we were…” It hurts too much, though, and she stops.

“Whatever,” Thea says, characteristically dismissive of anything outside her own anger. “It’s none of my business anyway.” She tosses a packet of peanuts across the bar, so hard that Laurel has to shake the sting out of her hand after she catches them. “Here you go. Anything else I can get you, big spender?”

Laurel tries to catch her breath, her memories. _Pinot Noir,_ she thinks. _Merlot. Cabernet. Hell, even jello shots._

“Nothing else,” she says out loud, and closes her eyes.

—

She’s feeling a little deflated by the time she gets home.

It’s not really Thea’s fault, though she can’t help thinking her time would have probably been better spent slamming her head against a brick wall than getting a cohesive sentence out of the youngest Queen; that’s about all she expected, to be honest, and Ollie’s even more delusional than she thought if he expected anything more than awkwardness and discomfort from either one of them. It’s not Moira’s fault either, and if she’s completely honest with herself, it’s not even Ollie’s.

It’s not about anything at all, really; it’s just a kind of malaise, a dissociative kind of melancholy that falls on her at around this time every day, almost like clockwork. Possibly the peanuts aren’t helping — salty snacks aren’t exactly the best choice for a healthy lunch, and definitely not when it’s the only thing she’s eaten all day — but she’s just about self-destructive enough not to acknowledge that. She’s doing fine, she decides, and ignores the way her hands start shaking before her keys have even hit the sideboard.

She hits the books by instinct, not because she has anything in particular to read (another delightful perk of the earthquake-induced unemployment, she thinks with some bitterness), but because she’s itching for a distraction. From Thea, from Moira, from Ollie, from everyone. From her father, most of all. From the memories of her mother, the way she left, the way Moira didn’t. She doesn’t want to think about Queens, and she sure as hell doesn’t want to think about Lances.

Families are screwed-up things, and it bothers her more than she’d care to admit that hers is worse than Ollie’s. His mother is locked up in Iron Heights waiting to be tried for mass murder, his under-age sister is running a nightclub, and he himself has run off to God-knows-where trying to ‘find himself’ while his precious city is falling apart in his wake. His family is a complete mess, from root to crown, but somehow it’s still neater than hers.

_No,_ she thinks, cutting herself off. Those are the things she’s not supposed to be thinking about, the things she’s not supposed to be feeling. Her dad, Oliver’s mom, poor little Thea left out in the cold, Ollie and Sara and the gaping chasm they left behind. She’s not supposed to be think of that, not supposed to be remembering how much damage was done, how many people were left hurting, how deep the cuts in all of them. She’s supposed to be be thinking of herself, just herself, Laurel and her own life. She’s done her duty today, checked in on all the people that Oliver abandoned, made sure they’re still here, still okay, still breathing. She did what he asked, didn’t she? And isn’t that a whole lot more than he would have done for her?

So no. No more thinking about fractured families. No more thinking at all. She won’t feel guilty for trying to turn off her brain, for trying to move on. She won’t feel guilty for focusing in on her own life for ten lousy minutes, for ripping open years-abandoned law books, poring over theory and practice, case studies and closing arguments, all the things she left behind when she graduated, when she stopped feeling the need to prove herself.

That’s one more thing she can thank Malcolm Merlyn for, she supposes; everyone has to prove themselves again now, even those of them who did it years ago. Laurel Lance has already made a name for herself in legal circles; she worked her ass off to make CNRI the kind of firm that the big-shots took seriously, the kind of firm that meant something to the people it was trying to help, and it kind of stings that all her hard work — all _their_ hard work — could crumble so easily, that it could be reduced to rubble on the whims of some deranged lunatic.

But then again, why not? After all, didn’t that same deranged lunatic reduce his own damn son to rubble too, and with just as little remorse?

The sound of tearing paper jolts her out of her reverie, and she looks down to find the page she was poring over ripped in half, worthless scraps shaking in her hands.

_So much for studying,_ she thinks, and watches half-blind as the paper flutters to the floor, phrases like _‘ad litem’_ and _‘corpus juris’_ flashing like fireworks across a field of vision gone suddenly blurry. Once they might have meant something to her, those words, but now they read like gibberish, nonsense scattered across the hardwood floor, a mess of legalese and pointlessness, and who was she trying to fool, thinking this was a good idea?

The distraction doesn’t work this time, doesn’t come as easily as it did after the _Gambit_. It’s so much harder to lose herself in the law when the law has let her down.

She turns the damaged book over in her hands, lets her nails drum out lyricless songs against the spine, bent backwards to the point of breaking more times than she can count, torn through and pored over for hours upon hours, night after night. This book has so much of her in it; they all do. Her sweat, her tears, even her blood when eagerness and carelessness earned themselves a paper-cut or two. After the tragedy, she lost herself in them, in the books and the law, in all the things they represented. They gave her faith, gave her hope and strength, gave her the weapons she needed to fight the world that had let her down, to hold herself afloat when everyone she loved was drowned or drowning. They meant so much to her back then, so much…

Now they’re just ink and paper, ripped and meaningless, strewn across the floor like so much worthless trash.

—


	5. Chapter 5

—

When her phone rings, her first instinct is to ignore it.

It’s maybe an hour later and she still hasn’t picked up the scraps of paper, still hasn’t cracked open another book, still hasn’t moved on. She hasn’t done anything at all, and she can’t help thinking in some twisted part of her that maybe that’s a kind of accomplishment in itself. She hasn’t jumped off a bridge, hasn’t downed a bottle of vodka and totalled her car against the side of a truck, hasn’t hurt herself or anyone else. She’s not even thought of Tommy, not until right now, and that means a whole lot when she steps back and realises just how long it’s been since she thought of anything else.

The phone’s klaxon grows louder, more obnoxious, and it’s all she can do not to pick it up and throw the damn thing against the wall. “Go away, dad.”

It’s pure frustration that drives her to grab for it; normally she’d be inclined to wait it out as a point of stubborn pride, but her nerves are frayed and she doesn’t have the patience. She can feel a headache starting to pound behind her temples, and there’s a curse on her lips as she grabs the thing, fully intending to silence it, but the name that’s flashing across the screen stops her before she has the chance.

It’s not her dad, or even her mom. It’s about the last person in the world she’d expect to hear from, especially after this morning, and it’s the surprise far more than any good intention that stills her thumb before she can swipe it across the big red ‘cancel’, that hits ‘answer’ instead, that holds the phone up to her ear, every last ounce frustration vanished in a heartbeat.

“…Thea?”

“Hey.”

There’s a waver in her voice, something that sounds like panic, and it sends a bolt of something similar carving a path through Laurel’s gut. “Are you okay?” she asks, before she can stop herself.

“Depends on your definition,” Thea mutters, scrabbling to get the quiver under control, to sound like the adult she’s trying so hard to convince everyone she is. “Look, I know I wasn’t exactly welcoming to you this morning, but…”

“Huh?’ Truth be told, Laurel’s all but forgotten about it. “Oh. That. Well, you know…”

“Uh huh.” She imagines Thea waving a hand, dismissing her with an eye-roll and a muttered _‘whatever’_. “Look, I know this is kind of out of the blue but… I don’t suppose you feel like snacking on some more peanuts?”

Laurel blinks, mouth hanging half-open. “Uh,” she manages, at least ninety per cent certain that she misheard her.

“I’m serious,” Thea says, then heaves the kind of sigh that makes it sound like the whole damn world is coming down all around her; it makes Laurel ache in her chest, the same kind of ache she felt when she looked at Moira and tried to lie about how well she’s been eating, the kind of ache that makes her want to protect this poor kid, this unfortunate girl who keeps getting sucker-punched by her family’s bad decisions. “Well, not about the peanuts, exactly. It’s just…”

“Thea,” Laurel interrupts, because what can she say? “Thea, you’re starting to worry me.”

“Oh.” She sounds surprised, like she hadn’t even thought of that outcome. “Look, it’s not serious. I mean, well, it is serious. It’s just… well, it’s not like anyone’s _dying_ or anything…”

Laurel’s breath hitches. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Thea echoes again. “Oh. Uh. Right. Yeah. Bad choice of words, I guess.” She takes in a breath, deep and loud, and holds it for a moment. “How ’bout we try this again, huh?”

“Sure,” Laurel says, massaging her temples. “Thea. Hi. What can I do for you?”

Thea snorts. “That’s the million-dollar question. Thing is, we’ve kind of run into a little ‘staffing problem’ tonight. At the club, y’know, and I was wondering… well, hoping, really…”

“You want me to fill in?”

It’s so simple, so stupid, and after all that build-up, all the rising panic, the tremors in Thea’s voice and the fear turning Laurel’s stomach sour, that horrible word, _‘dying’_ , the ghosts still spread out between them, echoes of this morning, of Iron Heights, of their respective families and all the damage they’ve done… after all that, it’s almost more than she can do not to burst out laughing all over again.

“I was kind of hoping,” Thea mutters, sounding so much like the sullen teenager she wants the world to believe she’s left behind.

Laurel can’t help but smile. “Thea, you know that I’m a lawyer, not a waitress, right?”

Thea’s grinding her teeth on the other end of the line, no doubt beating herself up for ever believing this might be a good idea; it’s not a pleasant image, all that frustration, and Laurel feels more than a little ashamed of herself. Thea must be in trouble if she’s calling her; just like Ollie, Laurel’s probably the last person she’d run to if she had any kind of choice, and it makes her feel selfish and arrogant to be so cold about it, to roll her eyes and throw her stupid worthless ink-and-paper education in the poor girl’s face. This isn’t what Oliver had in mind when he asked her to keep an eye on his sister, she knows, and she’s about to take the words back when Thea cuts back in with ice in her voice.

“Aren’t you more of an ex-lawyer now?” she hisses. “You know, after that little incident when my mother levelled your workplace or whatever?”

It’s supposed to be cruel, Laurel can tell, supposed to sting like salt in a wound. Maybe if she’d picked anyone else, it would have, but Laurel has been where Thea is; point of fact, she’s still there, and she knows better than anyone how overwhelming all that misplaced rage can be. Thea doesn’t sound cruel, doesn’t sound cutting or bitter; she just sounds scared and desperate, and the pieces of Laurel’s heart that are still strong enough to feel threaten to break along with the rest of her.

“Well,” she says, keeping her voice as steady as she can. “I suppose there is that…”

Thea snorts. “ _That_ ,” she mutters.* “*Right.”

The bitterness is gone in a heartbeat, leaving behind heartache and pain, and Laurel wants to take that away from her, bring back the anger if that’s what it takes, let her cut and jab at her, let her do whatever she wants if it’ll take away that pain. She knows this too well, knows her too well, and it’s so painful to hear her own pain in a young girl’s voice, in _Thea’s_ voice, because haven’t they been here before? Weren’t they here like this after the _Gambit_ , after Ollie and Sara? Wasn’t it Laurel who talked like this, then, who got angry in one second and then bitterly broken in the next, who didn’t know how to deal with poor little Thea, a bereaved little twelve-year-old who felt so alone and so abandoned?

Laurel let her down. It’s easy to realise that in hindsight, easy to look back and recognise the way little Thea would look up at her, the way her lips would tremble as she tried to smile, the way Laurel would look over her head, stare blankly at the wall and ask if her mother was home. It’s all so clear now, all so obvious, but back then all she could feel was anger and betrayal and loss. All she could feel was everything Thea’s feeling now.

She wants to reach through the phone, take her by the hand, this new grown-up Thea, squeeze her fingers like Dad squeezed hers at the funeral, and tell her that it’s not as simple as that, that things aren’t black and white, that Moira is still her mother, that she still loves her, that it doesn’t matter what she did, what she’s done, that Thea will always be her little girl. She wants to say a million things, each one more hopeless than the last, but it’s pretty obvious that Thea won’t listen, that she doesn’t want to listen. She wants people to reassure her, or at least try, but only so she can shoot them down. She wants to hurt, wants to swat away the tourniquets and band-aids, wants to bleed until it kills her. She wants to be _angry_ , and Laurel knows that because it’s all she ever wanted too.

“Thea…”

“Look.” She’s forcing herself to make this all about business, but Laurel can hear the little girl behind her voice, the little girl she’s known for half her life, the little girl she never really looked at until now. “Can you help or not? Because I’m just about at the end of my stupid brother’s little black book, and if you won’t help…”

“I didn’t say that.” The words are out before she even realises she’s thinking them. “Of course I’ll help, Thea. You know that.” Thea’s breath hitches over the line, just soft enough that they can both pretend it’s only static; even if she did know it, Laurel can tell, it’s hard to believe it right now. It’s tragic, and she tries to leaven the moment with some ill-advised optimism. “God knows, we girls need to stick together.”

“Right,” Thea huffs, a belligerent little laugh. “Sure. And after you’re done teaching me how to mix a Manhattan, we can braid each other’s hair and talk about boys.” Laurel opens her mouth to try to defend herself, to argue that that’s not what she meant, but Thea’s already moving on, waving the point away before she gets the chance. “It’s just a favour, Laurel, jeez. Believe me, if I could’ve gotten anyone else to fill in tonight, I would have.”

Maybe that’s true. Thea Queen is nothing if not proud, and stubborn to a fault; calling in a favour from her big brother’s complicated ex-girlfriend doesn’t exactly smack of independence, even without the other issues floating between their two families just now. It’s not too huge of a stretch to imagine her desperately and methodically exhausting every other avenue she can think of first, muttering curses under her breath every time she comes up empty-handed, and finally giving in when her back’s against the wall.

That’s not the point, though. They may not be family in the strictest sense, but they’ve been tangled together, Lances and Queens, almost as long as Laurel can remember; she owes a lot to their family, for all the pain it’s brought her, and she can’t help feeling that she kind of owes a lot to Thea in particular. Recompense, maybe, for all the ways they’re too alike to ever truly connect.

It’s not Laurel’s place to tell Thea not to be proud, and she’s probably the last person in the world who should tell anyone not to be stubborn. Right now, it’s not even really her place to be proud or stubborn herself; she can do that here, in the comfort of her own apartment, with no-one else around to suffer for her self-destruction. Whether she was Thea’s first call or her hundredth, it really doesn’t matter; Laurel agreed to keep an eye on Oliver’s family, and Thea’s just made it a whole lot easier to see it done.

Besides, she really needs the distraction.

—

The club is bustling when she gets there, light-years from the pre-lunch emptiness that greeted her that morning.

It’s no surprise, then, that Thea forgets the sullen moodiness of their earlier conversations, that she forgets all the tension and the anger; this time, she throws her arms around Laurel’s neck in what can only be described as desperate relief, and it’s by sheer force of will that Laurel keeps herself from asking if she’s all right, if she needs anything. They’re not there yet, neither of them, and it would be too awkward for them both. So, playing it safe, she settles for returning the hug with as much enthusiasm as she can muster with so much pressure on her ribs.

“The place looks good,” she manages, when Thea finally lets her go. “I’m sure your brother will be very proud.”

Thea snorts a laugh. It’s lighter than before, less jagged. “Until he finds out that I’m keeping it,” she quips, and there is so much of Oliver in the curl of her lip, devious and charming at the same time.

Laurel has no idea if she’s serious or not, but it’s not really her business anyway. Honestly, she can’t help thinking it would serve Ollie right if he came home to find that his underage sister had repossessed his precious nightclub. It’s a wonderful mental image, just the right mix of righteousness and cruelty, and the part of her that isn’t worried about Thea’s well-being wants to slap her on the back and applaud her for her thinking.

She doesn’t, though. She doesn’t indulge the worry, either, though that’s more a lesson from experience than any conflicting feeling. She just touches her shoulder, instinctive and tender, the way she used to touch Ollie’s when he went into one of his moods, the way Moira touched hers once or twice after the _Gambit_. The question twitches on her lips again, _‘how are you doing?’_ or _‘are you okay?’_ , but she holds it down a second time because she knows how she herself would react if anyone asked her that question right now. She knows how Ollie would react too, by walling himself off and running away, and Thea is so much like him in all the worst ways, just like both of them in all the ways they were so terrible (so wonderful) for each other. The familiarity kicks in her chest, a pulse of pain like a second heartbeat, and she takes her hand back before Thea can feel the tremors in her fingers, before she can sense the direction of her thoughts.

“So,” she says quickly, back to business because that’s the only safe place. “Where do you want me?”

—

Four hours and approximately four hundred broken glasses later, she decides it’s a good thing she went into law.

The club closes late, and it’s even later by the time they’re done stacking chairs and cleaning up spilled drinks. Thea takes great pride in her work — her brother’s work, technically, but hers by proxy — and Laurel finds that she takes pride too in watching her. Thea is a good kid, or she has the potential to be, but it’s all too rare to see her so taken, so brought to life by her own achievements. It’s not so long ago that Laurel was stepping in to save her from a potential jail sentence, not so long ago that Thea was kicking and screaming and resisting, not so long ago that she was a painful and powerful reminder of all Sara’s worst qualities. It’s not so long at all, but looking at her now it might as well have been a thousand years ago.

“You’re doing well,” she muses aloud, leaning on a chair. “Really well, actually. I’d go so far as to say you’re thriving.”

Thea’s behind the bar, counting cash, and like always she doesn’t even bother to look up. “That’s more than I could say for you,” she shoots back, but for once there’s no teenage rebellion in the words; she’s talking about the broken glasses, not Laurel’s life, and Laurel acknowledges the difference with a self-deprecating chuckle. “The damage is coming out of your pay-check, you know.” She finally looks up, and her eyes are bright. “Well… it would be. If I was paying you. Which I’m not, by the way.”

Laurel laughs. “Sorry about the glasses,” she says. “And the plates…”

“And the cutlery.” She’s almost smiling, though, and that alone is almost worth the ridicule of being the world’s most godawful bartender. “Which, while we’re on the subject, how is it even possible to shatter a stainless steel spoon?”

“Years of practice,” Laurel replies, deadpan.

“Uh huh.” Thea shakes her head, goes back to her counting. “Next time, I’ll just close up for the night. Tell ’em we have roaches or something. Gotta be less expensive than letting you run amok in here.”

Laurel opens her mouth to say _‘it wasn’t that bad’_ , but she stops before the words have a chance to drop. It’s not true, and they both know it. It’s not her brains that sent her to law school; it’s the fact that she can’t do anything else. She sure as hell can’t tend bar, as tonight has proved, and now that the chaos of customers and cocktails has worn off, the old familiar self-loathing is starting to set in. 

The cheap plastic from the chair is digging into her palms, painful and bracing, and she shoves it away with rather more force than necessary, watching as it topples over. It’s the only one left out; the others are all stacked in the corner, neat and tidy, and Laurel’s chair looks as out of place standing there in the middle of the floor as she feels inside herself, exposed and visible and fatally flawed.

It’s cute, the way Thea rolls her eyes and shakes her head, crosses to retrieve the chair and set it down in the corner with the others. It’s cute, the way she plays the grown-up even as they both know that Laurel will always see her as rebellious little Speedy, just like Ollie will. It’s cute, the way she’s risen to the task of running a club, the way she’s stepped into her big brother’s shoes, dressed herself up in his responsibilities like they were made for her all along. It’s cute, the way she catches Laurel’s mistakes, picks up after her, helps her out when it’s supposed to be the other way around. It’s cute, except it’s not really cute at all, is it? It’s not _cute_ , it’s _embarrassing_ , and it’s only now that the lights are down and the party’s over that Laurel lets herself see that side of it, the side that paints rebellious little Speedy in a much more flattering light than Laurel ‘the lawyer’ Lance.

She wasn’t made for this sort of thing. She clings to her identity, law school and CNRI, the only thing she ever did well. It’s not because she’s inherited her mother’s flair for academics or her father’s passion for the law, and it’s not because she’s unshakable in wanting to do good; it’s because this is the one thing she never failed. Little details and loopholes, tying stupid people in knots with clever words, and she always had a head for Latin; what else would she do, with a skill-set like that and nothing else? Besides, she was the first-born, the oldest, the so-called prodigal daughter; she never had the freedom that Sara did to play the field, to fool around and dance with every devil that came her way, to swing life away and smirk her way out of a hearing when Daddy made the shoplifting charges disappear. Maybe if she’d lived long enough for Laurel to finish law school, all that parental pressure would have turned to Sara too, and maybe she would’ve grown up as angry and useless as her big sister… but of course, they’ll never know.

Thinking about it makes her angry. For all her so-called accomplishments — college, law school, CNRI, a career full of successes and strengths — Laurel crashed and burned tonight. She crashed and burned so hard, so terribly, and it kills her to think back and realise that Sara would not have.

Sara, the jack-of-all-trades. Sara, who had the freedom to be whatever the hell she wanted, to do whatever the hell she wanted. Sara, the sweet second-born, who got to run around playing truant while first-born Laurel had to be the good one, the responsible one, the who who was going places. Sara, who spent the latter half of her high-school years making friends and tending bar and getting almost-but-not-quite arrested. Sara, who ran away with her big sister’s boyfriend and died for it. Sara, who’ll never get a chance to grow up like Thea did, who’ll never get the chance to show Laurel how real bartenders do it, who’ll never get to put those bartending skills to use ever again.

It’s bitterness that fills Laurel’s head now, and bitterness that fills her mouth, turns her apologies sour and turns responsible young Thea into a mirror image of a Sara she can barely remember any more. She’s angry and she’s upset and she wants nothing more than to get out of there, to get away from this place, this darkened nightclub filled with the ghost of a woman who’ll never even see it. She wants nothing more than to leave, to run away like Oliver, to get buried like Tommy, to do anything she can to stop herself from seeing Sara, to stop herself from realising how much she doesn’t miss her, and how much she wishes she could.

“Earth to Laurel…”

She blinks, shaking off the shadows, remembering that it’s six years later, that she’s with Thea, that Sara isn’t here, won’t ever be here. “Huh?”

The playful grin has fallen off Thea’s face, and she’s frowning. “I said ‘you can go home now’,” she says, speaking very slowly. “You okay?”

“What?” Laurel shakes her head again, takes a couple of steps towards the bar, purposeful now. “Oh. Yeah. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

It’s not really, though, and Thea might be young but she’s not nearly as naive as people think she is. She knows an alarm bell when it sounds, recognises a klaxon when it warns of something dangerous, and you don’t get to be a Queen without knowing when there’s something to be worried about, when someone’s hiding something. She’s glad her family never grew up rich, glad that they never had anything more than they needed; if there’s one thing she learned from all that time with Oliver, it’s that money and status don’t come cheap.

“Okay…” Thea’s blinking at her, like she doesn’t know whether to push or back off. “Y’know, you’ve been out of work too long if one night tending bar can wipe you out.”

Laurel swallows a sigh, forces back the memories with the staccato rhythm of another few steps. She reaches the bar, leans over, squints up at the multi-coloured bottles. She’s been running back and forth between them all night, but now that the crowds are gone she can really look at them, watch the way the smoky club lighting bounces off the glass, the liquid, the promise of darkness and silence and oblivion. That’s one way to get Sara out of her mind, she thinks, and turns her attention back to impressionable young Thea.

“Maybe,” she says, mustering what she hopes is a mischievous smile. “But the night’s still young, isn’t it?”

Thea might be young, might be impressionable, but she’s no fool; in that, at least, she’s miles ahead of her brother, and there’s something sickeningly close to pity in the way she shakes her head. “No free samples,” she says, quite firmly.

“That’s unexpected,” Laurel says, softening the smile with lawyer’s precision. “I’d’ve though you, of all people, would be up for anything.”

Thea shakes her head, deadly serious. “That’s the old Thea,” she says, and she sounds as bitter and angry as Laurel feels. “The new Thea doesn’t get that luxury. The new Thea’s too busy picking up the pieces of the city her mother tried to level and her brother ran away from.” She bites her lip, turning away before the tears can show, like Laurel doesn’t know they’re there, like she can’t taste them. “The new Thea had to grow up fast.”

Laurel winces. She feels a little like the wind’s been taken out of her sails, which is rather more surprising because she didn’t really feel like she was sailing particularly well in the first place. Thea looks so small, so young, but there’s a strength in her that no amount of emotion can hide; it’s just another reminder of Sara, of all the things that Laurel can barely remember about her, all the ways she got to live so much more, got to be so much more. Thea is on a very different path to Sara, a safer one, but there’s enough similarity between them that it kicks her in the dark place she wants to forget, the graveyard filled with people she used to love.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and it sounds hollow and vacant, like it did when she sat opposite Moira in that damned prison and apologised for nothing.

Thea doesn’t change the subject like her mother did, though. She just stands there staring at her like she’s just grown an extra head. “What’re you sorry for?”

But that’s just it, isn’t it? She doesn’t know. She didn’t know then, and she sure as hell doesn’t know now. Whatever troubles have fallen on the Queen family, they brought them all on themselves; Laurel is completely blameless, completely free from all their twisted guilt. She doesn’t owe them anything. She went to Iron Heights because she promised Ollie that she would, and she’s here tonight because Thea asked her to be. She’s doing this out of the goodness of her heart, from a well of kindness that’s slowly but surely starting to run dry. She’s doing nice things, or at least she’s trying to, and it doesn’t make any sense that all she wants to do is say that she’s sorry.

“I don’t know,” she says out loud, a confession that never quite had the strength to surface back at Iron Heights. “God help me, Thea, I really don’t know.”

Thea studies her for a very long moment, wordless and thoughtful. Her eyes are sad, open and wet with those tears she was so desperate to hide a moment ago; there’s a sorrow in her that makes Laurel want to reach out, want to throw her own feelings aside and be the big sister she’s forgotten how to be, but there’s a hardness in Thea’s face that says she won’t let that happen. She looks so grown up, so mature and so strong, and somehow the pain just makes her look even more so, a young woman who understands what she’s feeling, who knows that she’s justified. It stings to see, and it reminds Laurel in a visceral way that she’s not like that at all.

She should be. She knows that. She’s the one who took care of her alcoholic father when nobody else would, when her sister ran off with her boyfriend and died, when her mother ran off too and didn’t have the decency to make them grief, when she and him were left alone. She’s the one who had to be the grown-up, who had to be strong, who had to do everything because he couldn’t do anything at all. She’s the one who held the two of them together all by herself, the one who kept what little was left of their family alive and intact, and all while pushing herself through law school, graduating with honours, getting into CNRI, building a damn good life for herself even as she used both hands to hold together the pieces of his. She’s the one who was mature because she had to be, who grew up because everyone else refused to be. She was exactly where Thea is right now, and seeing her standing there behind that damn bar, arms folded and eyes soft, makes her realise that she’s not like that any more. She’s not grown-up, not mature, and she is so far from strong.

At long last, Thea shakes her head. The softness in her eyes is unbearable, tears so close to spilling but so tightly controlled. She looks like she wants to break, like maybe there’s a part of her that realises Laurel is the one idiot in the world right now who really and truly understands; she looks like she’s tempted, but the maturity is greater than the sting of tears and when she reaches back behind her, it’s strength that tightens her jaw.

“All right,” she says, fingers closing around a bottle of something dark and potent, something neither of them can name. “Just this once.”

Laurel watches the light bounce off the glass, the liquid, the darkness. “Just this once.”

—


	6. Chapter 6

—

Once turns to twice, then three times, and the only reason it stops there is because the DA’s office gets in touch.

The voice on the other end of the line is clipped and completely professional. It’s a solid and much-needed reminder of what she needs in her life right now, what she’s missed without CNRI there to focus her. Sweet-talking free drinks out of Thea every other night is all well and good, and maybe the buzz of the illicit goes some way to getting Tommy and Sara out of her head, but this is business and that’s what matters. For all its troubles, Starling is not a cheap city to live in, and the quake has already taken its toll on her wallet in more than just the forced unemployment. Besides, she’s always been the best version of herself when she’s working, when there’s something tangible to tether her, to keep her grounded; she’s been slipping lately, and not just in the time she’s spent at Verdant.

So she dives into the opportunity head-first, focuses in on the task like she always did before, micro-manages every little thing as it comes up, one by one. Charming the disembodied voice of Adam Donner over the phone, then charming him in person when he invites her for an interview. Picking out the perfect power-suit, the perfect heels, the perfect make-up, when the day comes. Picking her words, picking her passions, picking the right things to say. There’s not much difference between doing this and crawling to Verdant every time the pain gets close — distraction is distraction, no matter the form — but at the very least this one is productive. It’s amazing how acceptable a little unhealthy obsession suddenly becomes when it brings the promise of a decent wage.

It’s not so hard to wow at the interview; Adam Donner has passionate feelings about vigilantes, about the Hood and the copycat clones that have sprung up since the earthquake, and it doesn’t take much for Laurel to convince him that she shares his priorities, that she’s through with supporting would-be heroes who refuse to help the people who need them most. Her head is full of Tommy, of Tommy and the vigilante who left him to die, who walked away without a second thought, and though Adam is well and truly wowed by her enthusiasm, she’s shaking so hard by the time he offers her the job that she slips right out of his handshake.

The DA’s office is about a thousand miles away from CNRI, and not just in location. Working for Kate Spencer is like working for royalty, even if their paths don’t really cross more than once or twice a week; mostly, she spends her time with Adam, but even he is a far cry from the legal aid types she’s used to. Working at CNRI was about doing good, doing right, trying to help people; working under a district attorney is about practicing law.

Working there means working hard. It means early starts and late finishes, and by the time she clocks out for the night she’s too exhausted to even think of hitting Verdant. What small comfort she might have found there isn’t worth the morning after, and making a splash in a new job with a new boss means not showing up with a hangover. It means coming in every day with an all-or-nothing attitude, pouring everything she has and everything she is into this new place, this new world, and that makes a pretty compelling argument for staying home on the rare occasion she actually gets to go there at all.

The problem is, of course, exhaustion isn’t enough to shut off the ghosts in her head when she turns off the light.

Verdant made it easier. Thea kept her closely regulated, limited her to two or three drinks, but Laurel’s never been a big drinker anyway, and she doesn’t need more than that to feel the now-familiar buzz, the heady haze that blocks out the bad things. It’s hard to think of Tommy when her head’s swimming in ill-gotten booze, hard to remember Sara when she’s riding the high of another free sample, hard to picture either one of them when she’s swapping stories with Ollie’s grown-up baby sister. It’s hard to think of anything at all when she’s floating and dizzy, and it’s entirely too easy to fall asleep once her head’s heavy enough.

Exhaustion doesn’t work the same way. It doesn’t make her head heavy; it just makes it ache, and it sure as hell doesn’t block out the faces of the people she used to love.

Exhaustion doesn’t quiet the ghosts inside her head like liquor does. It just makes them scream louder.

—

By the time she clocks out of her first full week at the DA’s office, she’s slept maybe an hour and a half.

It doesn’t interfere with her work, in no small part because she refuses to let it, but that doesn’t make it any more bearable when she’s staring up at the ceiling for the fourth night in a row, driven to madness by the combination of exhaustion and pain, the gut-punch of memory clawing against the vertigo of almost-but-not-quite dropping off. It makes her feel delirious, like she’s losing her mind, and more times than she can count she’s so damn sure that she feels Tommy’s hands against her skin or hears Sara’s voice ringing in her ears, so damn sure that they’re right there in the room, so damn sure that they’re still there, still with her…

It feels like a kind of torture, endless and without relief, like she’s slowly going crazy, and it’s only sheer stubbornness that keeps her from crawling back to Verdant, to Thea and her free drinks, to the way she rolls her eyes and says _‘just this once’_ three times a night, to the way she turns a blind eye because Laurel helps her stack chairs and sweep the floor when even the most diligent waitresses have given up and gone home, to the way she knows what Laurel’s feeling, to the way she’s feeling it too.

In a twisted, maddening sort of way, it feels kind of like a victory, all this lying awake, staring at the ceiling, trying not to hear the voices that won’t be silenced. It feels like a victory because every night she lies there is another night she’s not like her father. She can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t move without wanting to scream the names of the dead people who refuse to leave her alone, but at least she’s suffering under her own terms. Verdant was a great escape for a few days, and it helped that she could go there under the guise of keeping an eye on Thea, but she’s back in the real world now, the world her father left behind when the choice was his, and that means being the same person she was last time, the intelligent and successful woman that her father sees, the mature grown-up that she sees in Thea. It means being the person she wants to be, the quick-witted lawyer with a new job and a new lease of life.

Besides, her dad is so proud of her. He takes her out for dinner at the end of the week, his treat, and it’s been so long since she saw him light up like this, so long since she saw him shine and sparkle, so damn long since he looked at her with anything other than pity in his eyes. It’s been so long, and she can’t bear the idea of turning that pride into something else, into memories of his own demons. She remembers the morning after the funeral, the worry in his voice, and she’d do anything in the world not to make him sound like that again.

She knows the truth; it’s a drink or two with her ex-boyfriend’s sister, a distraction from the grief that keeps trying to break her, a moment’s comfort that helps her sleep at a time when she can’t sleep any other way. She knows it’s nothing more than that, but Dad doesn’t. He’s not got the blessing of her insight, her self-awareness, and she can’t blame him for the way he worries at every swallow she takes, the way his questions stutter over the line when he asks if she’s okay.

She can’t make it worse. She can’t taint the way he looks at her now, can’t bring back the worry that’s finally starting to dissipate. More, though, she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to turn him away from her, doesn’t want to bring back the helpless old man who isn’t her father, doesn’t want to lose the way she feels when he looks at her like she might be more than just the promise of his own problems reignited.

And so she doesn’t. She doesn’t go back to Verdant, doesn’t sweet-talk any more drinks out of Thea, doesn’t do any of the things she so desperately wants to. She stays home, stays in bed, stares at the ceiling and slowly drives herself crazy. For her father’s sake, for her job, for the part of herself that knows how much worse the alternative would be. Maybe a little for the part of herself that’s masochistic, too, the part of herself that doesn’t want to let Tommy go, that still can’t let Sara go even after all these years, the part of herself she’s still too frightened to talk to, the part that takes on their voices to tell her that it’s all her fault.

It’s hard to cast aside any part of her, harder still to ignore the parts she wants to, and maybe she’s just replacing one vice with another when she trades in extra-strong cocktails for extra-strong coffee. Maybe, but it’s better than the alternative, better that risking everything she’s worked so hard for. A moment’s numbness might feel like a lifetime, but the pain is still right where she left it, and it’ll be waiting to cut her open as soon as she can feel again.

She’s going to drown anyway. That much gets more and more apparent with every day and every endless night.

At least this way, she’ll leave a paper trail.

—

In a stroke of irony that will follow her around for months, it’s Adam who suggests she try out some medication.

She’s about three-quarters of the way through her third coffee of the morning, and already halfway towards the machine for a fourth. It’s something of a morning routine by this point, and she’s practically wearing a hole in the carpet with all the back-and-forth, but that’s the drawback of sharing one coffee machine between an entire office. She doesn’t even think twice about it, and when Adam intercepts her before she can fill up her cup again it doesn’t even occur to her that the serious look on his face might have more to do with her caffeine intake than her performance.

“A word in my office,” he says, and it’s not a request.

“Sure.” She doesn’t need to know what this is about to know that she’ll need more than a quarter of a cup to get through it. “Just let me grab another—”

“Now.”

He sounds so sober, so aggressive, she can’t help thinking it’s something of a miracle that she doesn’t have a full-on panic attack. Between the lack of sleep and the abundance of caffeine, her heart is beating damn near out of her chest; breathing is hard, and walking in a straight line is harder still, and it’s with a small flicker of self-deprecation that she finds herself wondering if maybe it’s time to reassess which one of her coping methods really is the most unhealthy.

Still, because she’s nothing if not a staunch professional when the moment calls for it, she keeps her expression steady, keeps her hands behind her back so he won’t see the way they’re trembling, keeps her knees locked and her feet facing forward, takes slow and straight steps and doesn’t give anything away. She keeps herself composed, just like she did at the interview, and even musters something of a smile as she takes the seat he holds out for her.

“If this is about the Brown case,” she ventures, “I’ll have that witness report on your desk by lunch—”

“It’s not about the Brown case.”

His eyes are narrowed, expression tight, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s just the disapproval or whether there’s something else at play entirely. He holds the expression for moment or two, until Laurel’s sure her heart is going to burst and get her fired for sure.

“So, then, what is it about?” she asks, and she’s too nervous to even think about whether it sounds unprofessional.

His expression doesn’t change, but she’s sure she catches a softening behind his eyes in the moment before he asks, “How many cups of that awful machine coffee have you choked down this morning?”

Laurel frowns, perplexed. “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug. “Two or three, maybe? I’ve not really been keeping track.” She doesn’t add, _‘I’ve got more important things to worry about, like our clients’_ , because she’s still not really sure what this is about, and she doesn’t want to give him any reason to second-guess hiring her. “Why?”

The serious businessman is well and truly gone now, replaced by something else entirely. Laurel thinks she recognises the feeling that stiffens his shoulders and turns his jaw tight; it’s the same thing she saw on her father’s face when he drove her home after the funeral, the same look he couldn’t hide when he came back to her apartment and found her halfway through a bottle of wine. _Worry_ , unwanted and unwarranted. It makes her angry, makes her want to lash out, demand to know who the hell this smug bastard is that he thinks he has the right to look at her that way, to ask personal questions about her caffeine habits, to—

“It occurred to me,” he says, cutting off her thoughts with a smile that is entirely too charming for the situation, “that you’ve only been here a week, and you’re probably not aware of the more palatable options round here.”

Laurel stares at him, beyond confused now. “I’m sorry?”

“Come on,” he says, like that’s any kind of answer. “I’m taking you out for a real cup of coffee.”

—

He takes her to a cafe, a tiny place about two blocks away from the office that she’s sure she’s never seen before.

It’s not exactly professional, she thinks, but after ten seconds and about half a swallow of real fresh-brewed coffee, she realises that she doesn’t care. She’s been taking for granted the convenience of the coffee machine, a luxury they never had at CNRI what with their non-existent budget, and apparently she’s lost what meagre sense of taste she once had, because the second she gets a mouthful of the real stuff down her, it’s all over.

“Oh my god…” she manages, with a luxuriant _When Harry Met Sally_ sort of moan, and she doesn’t even care that half the cafe’s customer base is turning in unison to stare.

Adam is grinning the sort of smug self-satisfied grin that lawyers often get when they find a chance to hang the opposition with their own evidence. “See?” he says. “If you’re going to insist on sending yourself to an early grave with all that caffeine, at least do it right. You’re not some down-and-out fresh-from-law-school wannabe pushing papers in the Glades any more, Laurel. It’s time to raise your standards.”

He’s talking about more than just the coffee, Laurel can tell, and it’s only awareness of their respective positions that keeps her from raising an eyebrow at the implication.

“I’d like to think that I’ve done that,” she says. She takes another gulp of coffee, more to steel her nerves than anything else, and rushes on while the taste is still fresh. “Is this about my performance? I know you took a chance when you hired me, but it’s only been a week, and I thought I was doing well…”

“You are,” he says, a little too quickly. “We’re not in the habit of handing out second chances like your colleagues at CNRI. If you’d needed one, believe me, you’d know about it long before it came to a meeting.”

Laurel sighs, equal parts relief and renewed confusion. “So what’s this about then?” He shrugs, playing coy, and she calls his bluff with a twitch of her jaw. “Come on, Adam. I’m a lawyer, just like you. I know a heavy-handed metaphor when I see one.”

“No metaphor,” he insists, holding up his hands. “It’s nothing like that, I swear. Sometimes a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee…” He looks away as he says it, though, and Laurel’s seen more than enough uneasy witnesses take the stand to recognise the evasion and know what it means; maybe she’s a better lawyer than he gives her credit for, or maybe he’s just trying to soften the blow, because he clocks the spark of recognition in her, and doesn’t give her a chance to call him on it. “It’s just…”

 _There it is,_ she thinks, and doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or proud of herself. “What?”

“Well…” He leans across the table, intense and very serious. “Look. I know we’ve not been working together for very long, and maybe I’m over-stepping some professional boundaries here. If I am, feel free to say so, and we’ll pretend this conversation never happened.”

It’s a nice gesture, Laurel thinks, if an empty one; what new employee in their right mind would have the balls to call their new boss out on unprofessional behaviour? Still, the thought is worth something, if not much, and she nods her acknowledgement. “Okay.”

He nods back. “It’s just… well, in addition to being a capable and efficient young woman, who I’m sure will be a fabulous addition to our legal team, I can’t help noticing that… well, you drink a _lot_ of coffee.”

“We’re lawyers,” Laurel says flatly. “We all do.”

“True enough,” he shrugs. “But… okay, stop me if I’m out of line here, but you don’t seem like the sort of woman who’d risk her health for a quick caffeine fix. At least…” And suddenly, Laurel can see how he climbed the ranks so fast; he’s not that much older than she is, but there’s a shrewdness in the way he looks at her that she’s only ever seen in the best and the brightest. “…not without a good reason.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, evasive as a guilty defendant.

He was expecting that, she can tell. “Okay,, then. Let me break it down for you, prosecution-style.” It’s a good thing he’s got charisma to burn, she thinks, because this little _‘I’m not your boss, I’m your friend’_ routine would be getting really old if he didn’t. “Not even a month ago, some lunatic with an earthquake machine levelled half the Glades. Including, if I’m not mistaken, your old offices at CNRI. Taking a wild guess, maybe it took down some of your clients, some of your colleagues… hell, maybe even some of your friends. You’ve got a lot of connections in that place, Laurel, and it’s no secret you were there when the thing went off. So maybe you saw something, or maybe you lost someone…” He shrugs again, cool and easy and everything this conversation is not. “Either way, it’s natural that you’d have a little difficulty adjusting to a new job, a new life. After all that…”

“You’ve got me mistaken for another new employee,” Laurel says, sharp and serrated. “I’m not having difficulty with anything.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows go up nearly as high as his hairline. “So tell me, then, counsellor… and please remember that you’re under oath…” He relishes that part far too much, Laurel thinks, and wishes she could slap him. “…when’s the last time you slept?”

Annoyance makes her reckless, and petulant. “Probably yesterday, during your little team-building lecture about etiquette.”

He actually laughs at that, which kind of undermines the affronted sullenness she was shooting for. “Apparently so,” he quips. “Because you clearly weren’t listening.”

Laurel sighs again, wills the aggravation to drain away, forces herself to sound civil, if not sincere. “Look, Adam. I appreciate the concern, really. But I’m okay.”

He nods, earnest enough that she can almost pretend he believes it. “Okay,” he says. “You know your situation better than I do. So long as you keep doing your job, I shouldn’t care anyway, right? I just felt it was my duty to get to know the new blood, you understand. After everything that’s happened in the city lately…” He trails off with another shrug. “Besides, it kind of breaks my heart to see a promising young ADA such as yourself wasting away on that godawful machine coffee.”

Laurel thinks of Verdant, of Thea Queen, of her father. “That’s a little extreme,” she says. “I’m hardly ‘wasting away’.”

“Good,” he replies. “Because you’re a damn fine lawyer, Miss Lance, and I’ve seen too many damn fine lawyers go under because they were too proud to get help after something like this.” Laurel politely refrains from asking how many man-made earthquakes he’s seen, that he can validly use the phrase _‘something like this’_. “But you know your own needs better than I do, of course. I’m just a concerned citizen.”

Laurel grunts her acknowledgement, and defiantly downs the rest of her coffee even though it’s all but gone cold by now. “I appreciate it,” she says again.

Adam watches her as she stands, and there’s a kind of sadness in his face that says maybe he really has seen people like her before, that maybe he really has watched colleagues lose themselves to their troubles. It almost makes her want to listen to him, or at the very least apologise for being so abrasive, but her pride trumps his sincerity, and she holds her tongue.

“Look,” he says, though he makes no effort to keep her there. “I’m just saying… if you are having trouble sleeping, for whatever reason, there are better and healthier alternatives to drowning yourself in coffee. Working for the DA’s office means great healthcare benefits, and it’d be a crime not to take advantage of them if you need something.” He meets her gaze, holds it, then adds again with emphasis, “For _whatever_ reason.”

Laurel swallows, and the fresh brew turns to acid on her tongue. “I’ll think about it.”

—

Infuriatingly, she does think about it.

She thinks about it for the rest of the day, trawling through paperwork, vision blurring as she tries to focus sleep-deprived eyes. She thinks about it all night, staring up at the ceiling for the hundredth time that week. She thinks about it the following morning, too, choking down cup after cup of godawful machine coffee and remembering. She thinks about it that evening, when the office lights go down and she finds herself looking for an excuse to stay, an excuse to keep working, an excuse not to go back home.

Her apartment is cold, empty, and she’s not sure which of the two she hates more right now. The chill makes her shiver, but the emptiness creeps inside and chokes her. It’s all too tempting to go back to Verdant, to check in on Thea and ask if she’s heard from Ollie, to grin and offer to clean up after the customers have gone in exchange for a glass of Pinot or a shot of vodka. It’s all too tempting to stay out all night, to hit another kind of club and find herself someone to go home with, a strange bed to lie in, sheets that aren’t hers, and a ceiling she doesn’t know.

It’s that temptation that speaks to her more than anything else. She can live with thoughts of Verdant, of Thea and Ollie, of bribing a few drinks to keep from going home then bribing a few more to keep from thinking. It’s not a problem, it’s a coping method, and if she’s learned anything from a week’s worth of stuttering and shaking hands, it’s that coffee can be just as deadly as cognac. She’s not ashamed of the urge to drink, and she’s sure as hell not ashamed of the urge to get the hell out of her apartment.

But the other thought? A stranger in a strange bed? A body that isn’t Tommy’s? Unfamiliar hands all over her? That’s a bridge too far.

It frightens her, thinking that way. It frightens her that she would indulge the thought at all, even in passing, but it’s nothing short of terrifying to jolt upright at three in the morning and realise that she’s more than just tempted by the thought of a stranger’s body, that she’s actually aching for it.

She doesn’t think she was asleep when the realisation hits, but maybe she wasn’t as awake as she thought either; the feeling comes to her like a kind of dream, a haze of want and heat and emotion, nameless words and faceless sensations, and it feels like waking up from something, a nightmare or another kind dream entirely. Maybe it’s both at the same time, the full-body blush of unconscious desire and the horror of night terrors rolled into one, because her body is running hot and cold at the same time, ignited in places that shouldn’t be feeling anything and frozen in places that are usually too quick to feel too much. She feels confused, almost feverish, too much sensation ricocheting through her, and when she buries her face in the pillow to stifle the sudden sobs she finds that it’s already soaked and stained with salt.

She sweats through the rest of the night, shaking with shame, sheets turned slick under white-knuckle fists, and in the morning, she calls in sick for the first time in her life.

—

Getting a prescription is much easier than it should be.

Laurel never really thought about the far-reaching effects of the earthquake, about the five hundred other families who lost their loved ones, about the countless people mourning friends and lovers and God only knows what else, about all the other souls our there struggling to survive after everything was ripped from them. She’s been so caught up in her own grief, in thinking about Tommy and trying not to think about Ollie or Sara or all the other losses she thought she’d moved on from. She’s been so busy thinking of her own pain, she never stopped to think of anyone else’s.

The truth of it is inescapable now, though. Even she can’t ignore the miles of broken hearts and broken minds, of depression and post-traumatic stress, of sleepless nights and broken hearts and attempted suicides. The earthquake took away more than just Tommy, and Laurel’s not the only one struggling to cope in its wake; looking around a waiting room full of broken people is a stark reminder of all the things she didn’t even realise she’d forgotten, all the destruction and the devastation, the world outside her shattered little bubble. It makes her feel humble, but it also makes her feel worthless, guilt striking hard like scalding water against skin that’s already too sensitive, too blistered, and suddenly all she wants to do is scream.

The doctor, when she finally gets to see him, doesn’t spend more than a minute or two with her. He can’t, really, and not because he doesn’t want to. She’s seen the waiting room, the line a thousand miles long full of desperate people in need of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, sleep aids and counselling services and a thousand other things. She’s waited in that line herself, and she knows it doesn’t end; it’s a month after the fact now, and still no sign of slowing, and though a part of her resents it — isn’t her pain worth more than a minute and a hastily-scribbled prescription for benzos? — the part of her that also works in a high-pressure, high-intensity field can’t help but sympathise.

Besides, she’s never been one for spilling her guts or sharing her feelings, and if the healthcare system’s overcrowding problem will get her a pocket full of sleep aids without the need to explain herself to a perfect stranger, she’s sure as hell not complaining. It’s better for everyone involved if she says as little as possible, and for herself most of all.

Getting a prescription is one thing, though; actually finding the courage to use it is another question entirely, and for a very long time, all the pills do is sit on the bedside table and mock her as she fails to sleep.

It’s not that she has any reason to be worried, she knows; whatever worries her dad might have about her inheriting his addictive personality begins and ends with the booze, and she’s already put an end to that by choosing her new job over another night at Verdant. She’s not afraid of falling into the same trap he did, not afraid of losing herself like he did, of becoming a burden to those around her because she can’t deal with her own problems. For about the millionth time, she reminds herself that she’s not like that, not like _him_ , and she has no reason to worry. She takes after him in so many ways, that’s true, but the bull-headed resilience is all her mother’s.

So, no, it’s not that. She’s not worried about what the pills might do to her, what she might become with them in her system. She’s not afraid of slipping, of falling, of the kind of dependance she’s seen again and again and again, and not just in her dad, her own blood. She’s not afraid of what might happen if she needs something so badly she can’t say no, if she gives in so completely that she loses all resistance, loses sight of all the things that have kept her strong until now. That’s not her fight, and it’s not her fear.

It’s not the thing itself that she’s afraid of. It’s _her_. It’s Dinah Laurel Lance, the precocious little smart-mouth who insisted on being called by her middle name at the tender age of four because her mother’s name was ‘too old’. It’s the kid who was always so sure she knew everything, so convinced that she didn’t need help, that she’d die before she ever needed help. It’s the that stupid self-destructive part of herself that still can’t let that feeling go, can’t bring herself to admit, twenty-three years later, that she might not be as tough as her four-year-old self imagined.

It’s a simple kind of fear, a primal kind, and it cuts deeper than all the sleeplessness and all the late-night sweating in the world. She is an intelligent, successful woman. She’s the daughter who helped her father to survive when he was drowning in his vices, the daughter who was left to do it alone because her mother abandoned them both. She’s the jilted girlfriend, the betrayed sister, the poor soul who couldn’t grieve either of the loves she lost with the _Gambit_. She’s the woman who had to bury another kind of love six years later, and the promising CNRI lawyer who had to bury the firm that meant the world to her. She is Laurel Lance, and she decided long ago that she is too strong to ever need help.

And so, she doesn’t. She doesn’t let herself need it, and she sure as hell doesn’t let herself take it. Instead, she lets the pills sit there on that stupid little table that her mother insisted she buy at half-price when she got this place, that stupid little table she thought of throwing out the window more times than she could count when it became the only thing her mother left behind. She lets them sit there, the table and the pills, both as hateful and unwanted as each other, always in sight but never touched, always there at her worst moments, always judging her and always just out of reach.

She lets them sit there, lets them become a new feature of the room she knows so well, a new piece of worthless furniture in a home that’s falling apart at the seams. She lets them gather dust, lets herself watch the middle-of-the-night shadows dance across the dark glass of the bottle, the white paper of the prescription, the curve of the child-proof cap. She lets herself study every line, every detail, in daylight and especially at night, lets herself memorise every feature, but she never lets herself look inside.

They’re there if she needs them, and knowing that gives her the strength not to. Not to take them, not to need them. At least for now, she’s stronger than the lack of sleep, stronger than the grief and the pain, stronger than the parts of her that Adam is so sure he understands. At least for now, she can rest easier, even if she still won’t sleep, knowing that she really is okay, that she doesn’t need help.

It’s a different Laurel that goes back to work on Monday morning, a different Laurel that crosses over to that stupid coffee-maker, a different Laurel who chokes down her second, third, fourth cup of the morning. It’s a different Laurel, too, who is ready for the moment when Adam Donner corners her and asks how she’s doing, and it’s a different Laurel who shrugs and tells him she’s doing just fine.

This time, he believes her. She’s strong and assured and, despite the abundance of caffeine coursing through her veins, there’s not a single tremor in any part of her. Of course he believes her.

A few more cups, and she might even believe herself.

—


End file.
